


Hoist the Colors High

by avatays



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (eventually) - Freeform, 100 Year War (Avatar TV), Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bisexual Disaster Sokka (Avatar), Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), Captain Sokka, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Past Sokka/Yue (Avatar), Past Suki/Sokka/Yue (Avatar), Piracy, Pirates, The Gaang Learns How Zuko Got The Scar (Avatar), Zhao (Avatar) Is An Asshole, au where everyone thinks sokka is super hot, except not an au that's literally how it was in the show, fuck zhao me and all my homies hate zhao, historically inaccurate pirate cuddling, lots of boat anatomy, that needs to be a tag i think it's very sexy and cool of sokka to be a bisexual pirate captain, there's some violence but i don't think it's going to be graphic, zuko's full of self-hatred but he's gonna eventually learn that he deserves love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:29:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25219303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avatays/pseuds/avatays
Summary: Sokka, the captain of the fabled White Raven ship, is having a marvelous time pirating fire nation vessels, returning to port for rendezvous with various lovers he's made along his travels, and sailing the seas with no leader to serve. Until, of course, his crew pulls a body out of the water. Then they find another person half-dead that the first one feels an obligation to save.Maybe all of this would have been easier if they’d been dead when he took them aboard.-Pirates AU but bending still exists.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 95
Kudos: 436





	1. The Seas Be Ours

**Author's Note:**

> the characters are aged up a bit, because it felt weird to me to write about 12- to 16-year-olds on a boat alone as pirates. can’t explain it, it just does. 
> 
> Zuko, Suki, Jet: 22  
> Sokka, Haru: 21  
> Katara: 19  
> Aang, Toph: 18
> 
> so this is a pirates au but there's still bending/the avatar all the good stuff in the original source material.  
> i think that's all i need to note, so please enjoy cool pirate ladies and bisexual disaster captain sokka!

The Fire Nation is not a kingdom to be trifled with. Fire is dangerous, uncontrollable, and their boat _is_ wooden and flammable, so it’s probably a bad idea to storm aboard a fire navy ship half-cocked with no plan, no real reason of doing so, and no ideas except to cause chaos and take the boat down.

So, naturally, that’s what they did.

Sokka would come up with a plan along the way, he’s really good at that, that’s why he’s the captain.

Besides, the Fire Nation ship would have attacked first when the boats were side by side, judging by the shouts they’d heard from across the waves. Katara is just speeding up the process by launching the boats towards each other so the firebenders didn’t have time to ready their cannons. With a twirl of her hands, the boats stop beside each other as if the ocean itself had stopped moving. Firebenders start aiming, waiting for the signal from their captain. No time for the anchor, Katara knows her job: keep the boat from floating away. She’s the only one who could do it.

The boats only a few feet apart, Sokka screams, “Attack!”

With a few shouts, his crew launches forward. Sokka grabs Toph’s hand and jumps over the short distance to the other boat with her. The second her feet land, she’s on the move. It’s much easier for her to see on metal than on wood, sure it is still earth, but the wood is too grainy and reminds her of sand. She _hates_ sand. So this? This is much more in her comfort zone.

She starts yanking on different parts of the steel boat, tearing the hull apart until water pours into the bottom of the ship.

Suki swings in on a rope from their mainmast, kicking two of the firebenders from their posts on the quarterdeck, and they fall onto the main deck a level below. She takes out her fans from her belt, and rushes the other soldiers on the deck that were unprepared for her attack.

Katara looks at the Fire Navy ship, and sees the cannons being pointed at their boat. She scoffs. _Amateurs_. A rush of water catches each of the cannons, the water freezing, covering the fronts and rendering them useless.

Amidst his crew taking care of the soldiers on deck, Sokka goes to the captain’s quarters, looking for plans, logs, anything that could be of use. Jet and his so-called “freedom fighters” were likely already on their way to the hold to steal provisions. Jet is useful, but he’s a burden; he isn’t even on the crew, but they were allies, so he is taking them from one port to another.

Which is a shame, someone like Jet would usually be his type: bad boy streak, doesn’t respect authority and fights the system, can hold their own in a fight, tall and lean, a smirk that would knock a weaker person off their feet – if only he wasn’t such a jackass. Besides, the whole “disrespecting authority” thing is only sexy if _he_ is not the authority figure Jet disrespects. No, the sooner Jet gets off his boat (and _away from his sister_ ) the better.

Still, it’s nice to have extra hands, especially hands that know how to fight. Longshot has almost certainly taken his place in the crow’s nest to shoot down anyone who gets too close to their boat. Smellerbee is fierce, and she’s great at close combat. Haru is an earthbender, so if he couldn’t figure out how to metalbend, he isn’t of all too much use out on the water, but he is still proficient in fighting, he’s strong, and he knows how to talk to people and it has actually come quite in handy to avoid confrontations at ports.

Haru is a good guy, so good a guy that Sokka is willing to ignore the fact that he, like Jet, also has a thing for his sister. ( _Gross. I mean,_ he thinks as he starts opening drawers in the desk, shoving his sword into a locked one until it opens, _I know the options of women at sea are limited, but_ Katara _? Really? When Suki is right there? It’s weird_.) Despite this, Sokka would let Haru stay on the boat as part of his crew if he wants to. Well, most of the freedom fighters he’d love to have join.

Just not Jet.

But that’s another matter.

As he searches through the captain’s desk, the aforementioned captain nowhere to be seen, he finds a few letters from admirals and generals about fire nation troop movements, and a map of ports that were held by the Fire Nation navy. _Bingo_.

He quickly folds the papers and put it in his pocket, when someone walks in. Sokka smiles, his sword still undrawn. “Captain, how do you do? Did you know your ship’s being invaded?”

The man shoots a sudden blast of fire from his fist, and Sokka runs to the other side of the quarters, before the captain rounds on him again, his hands up and his face red in fury. The firebender is wearing a thick armor, so Sokka wouldn’t be able to cause a lot of damage with his sword, unless he gets close enough to his head, but by that point the man could set him on fire, so he decides it isn’t his favorite plan of action so far.

His eyes dart around the room as he stays one step ahead of the firebender. Oh, a blanket, he notes as his gaze finally falls onto a knitted afghan in the corner of the room. That could work. It looks neatly folded, hopefully that means it’s a treasured item and he’d be less likely to burn it. Sokka rushes the room again, passing too close for comfort to a man with fists that were _literally on fire_ , and he grabs the blanket.

“No!” The captain snarls, rage building in his eyes. “Put that down, you Water Tribe savage!”

“Well that wasn’t very nice,” Sokka says with mock hurt. “I’m gonna keep it now.” He’s trying to incite a charge, which the captain falls right into. The captain runs towards him with a flaming hand, before Sokka throws the blanket over the man’s head and the fire goes out in fear of burning the blanket. It’s only a few seconds, but it’s enough time for Sokka to escape. He runs out of the room, slamming the heavy metal door shut, then swings the hatch to lock the man in. He knows there was a porthole in the room, so the captain would escape eventually, but it would hopefully be enough time for him and his crew to get off the ship.

He whistles twice, and when a whistle returns, Sokka follows it. He finds Jet in the hold alone, with a match in one hand as he looks closer at some of the labels in the dark holding room.

“I can’t figure out what’s in this,” Jet says when Sokka leans down beside him. “The label’s ripped off. Smellerbee took the food and first aid over to the ship already, but I just can’t figure out what’s in here.”

The match burns down all the way to his fingertips, so Jet blows it out, taking out his matchbook to light another. Sokka gets closer. He _knows_ that smell. What is it? It smells a little like char, a little like something unknown to him. As he struggles to place it, suddenly his eyes widen and he slaps the matchbook out of Jet’s hands.

“What the hell, man?” Jet hisses.

“It’s blasting jelly, unless we want to blow up the ship _with us on it_ , we’re staying away.” Sokka gets up, and notices Jet staring wolfishly at the box of explosives. “That’s an _order_ , Jet. Get anything else we need from in here. We’re getting off this boat.”

He turns and checks the other rooms. The Duke and Pipsqueak are fighting a few Fire Navy soldiers in the hallway, and sees that a good handful of them are fighting with swords and knives rather than with fire. Must not be benders; nice to see that the Fire Lord’s army has expanded to allow non-benders into the ranks.

Well, not good for _him_ , but a good gesture, he supposes.

He slices a few of the soldiers on his way through the hall, hitting any exposed skin he could see (which wasn’t much considering their armor) and successfully got their attention away from The Duke. The kid is so young, and he isn’t even technically on his crew, so he feels the need to keep an eye out for him a bit more than the others. His crew are all formidable fighters, and he knows they could take care of themselves. The Duke has proved himself worthy, but he is still a child, so he needs looked after a bit more. He can have as much skill as any of the rest of his crew, but his size works against him when he tried to fight grown men, and soldiers at that.

Once some of the crew members have turned to attack him, Pipsqueak takes out the others swiftly and moves on to start attacking the rest from behind. As Sokka fights two men, he kind of wishes he had two sword right now. Sure, he could always hold his own in a fight with just the one, but maybe it would help strengthen his left arm as well, get him more coordinated.

As his thoughts drift off for a moment, one of the soldiers took the opportunity to use his other hand to throw a fireball at Sokka.

Huh, so it was all a ruse. It worked. Well played.

The fire grazes his shoulder, and he hisses at the contact. He chooses not to look at the burnt skin; if he got squeamish and threw up, he’d never live it down with Toph.

Oh, and also they could use that time to kill him. Which might almost be worse. (Almost.)

They fight their way up to the deck, and he sees that Suki and Toph have successfully subdued almost all of the crew, Haru holding down the last conscious soldier. Sokka throws one of the soldiers off of him, and hollers, “Get back to the ship!”

Suki and Toph nod, and immediately rush to the side of the boat, where Katara was still holding steady. Katara pulls the boats closer for just a second, enough time for Suki to get Toph into the boat without much time where her feet weren’t on a surface she could use to see. Haru follows suit.

“Where’s Jet?” The Duke asks as Pipsqueak picks him up in one arm, ready to take them both into the other boat.

“He was in the hold, he was – ” Sokka groans when he realized he had left Jet. Alone. With explosives. “Oh, no.”

Quick footsteps ran past him as Jet shouts, “RUN!”

Sokka swears as he sees Pipsqueak get himself and The Duke into the ship, and he catches up with Jet as they hear a blast, and he and Jet jump across the water to land on the boat on their fronts. Katara makes quick work of shoving the Fire Nation boat as far away as she could before the final blast hit, and the boat starts to sink completely.

They watch the fires as soldiers jumped off the boat. Sokka could only be grateful that their boat isn’t entirely flammable. Sure, its core is wood, but the hull of the ship underneath the deck is metal, which Toph had suggested when she’d joined the crew, and there is a fine layer of dirt and sand covering the deck. The sand keeps the wood from catching fire nearly as easily. Sure, the sails could still catch, but that’s the biggest thing they had to worry about when fighting firebenders. They’d mostly put the dirt in the ship and got the metal floors and sides installed on the insides of the boat for Toph, but looking back, they should’ve done it a while ago, it was much safer to not have to constantly worry about all parts of the ship catching fire.

“How many miles is it from here to the closest shoreline?” Sokka asks. He didn’t like when he caused unnecessary death. Sure, it’s part of the business, part of _war_ , but it didn’t mean he likes it.

“Four. Maybe five?” Suki answers, drawing her eyebrows together in worry. “Far enough that most of them won’t be able to make it.”

Sokka looks at his sister, who nods, and using a strong wave, she rounds up all the men she could see wearing those ridiculous helmets, groups them together, and shoves them forward with a single powerful move. They shoot away in the direction of the nearest beach. Hopefully it pushes them close enough that they’d be able to swim the rest of the way.

“Did we check all of the rooms? Did they have any passengers?” Katara asks.

“Uh...”

With Jet’s answer, Katara slaps him upside the head. Sokka smirks. “You idiot! What if there were children on board? Or prisoners?”

Jet scoffs and stands up, brushing soot and sand off his clothes. “Whatever, they would’ve been Fire Nation kids anyways.”

Jet starts to walk away, and Sokka stands and grabs his upper arm. “When I tell you not to touch shit, _don’t fucking touch it_. You hear me?”

“You aren’t my captain, Sokka,” Jet says with a smirk.

“We’re on _my_ ship.”

“Yeah, a ship that you, what – you either stole it or were given it by your tribe,” Jet interjects, looking unrightfully smug.

“One more ship than you have, dumbass!” Sokka shouts. “It’s the ship that _I’ve_ been running for four years!” Sokka lets go of his arm, and pokes the man in the chest. “You’re a _guest_. That privilege can be revoked. You disobey again, you’re overboard. You understand me this time?”

Jet’s eyes narrow as they stare each other down, Jet appears to be looking to find how serious the threat is. Eventually, Jet seems to realize Sokka isn’t kidding, so he glances down and nods stiffly. He turns and walks down to the crew’s cabins. When the door slams shut, he groans. “I can’t fucking believe that guy.”

The rest of the freedom fighters were quiet as Sokka complains. Jet is their leader, but Sokka is _Jet’s_ leader – at least for now, when they were at sea. They were loyal, Sokka would give them that. He knew Suki and Toph were on his side on the matter at least; they had been glaring at Jet, but then again, they had good sense and didn’t like him either.

He sighs. “Dismissed. Luckily we don’t have any clean up to do.” Smellerbee, Longshot, Pipsqueak, and The Duke all bid the rest of the crew goodnight and go down to the cabin. Haru stays up, talking to Toph about trying to continue his metalbending training.

During the argument with Jet, Katara has been doing her best to ignore it all together, instead choosing to look at the smoldering wreckage of the enemy ship. 

Then, she gasps. “There’s someone still in the water!”

“Jet, you fucking moron,” Sokka swears under his breath as he rushes to his sister’s side to look over the edge of the boat.

Floating face up in the water is a young man that couldn’t be much older than Toph. He is wearing a bright orange and yellow jumpsuit and his eyes are closed. He’s covered in blue tattoos. That’s enough to convince him that he must’ve been a prisoner, not one of the soldiers.

“Katara, can you get him up here?”

She nods, and with careful movements of her hands, what looks to be a slow and gentle hurricane is rising, the man floating on the top. When he is placed on the deck, Katara immediately drops all but a bit of the water back into the source, her hands glowing as she ran a scan over the boy to look for damage. Besides a few bruises and abrasions, and a minor burn on the boy’s leg ( _fucking Jet,_ Sokka couldn’t help but think again), he appears fine. Katara stops her hands when she reached his lungs, and frowns. She opens the boy’s mouth slightly, and with her hand over his face, slowly starts to rise her wrist until what must’ve been a few cups of water were in her hands. The boy starts coughing, but he’s breathing, and that’s what mattered.

Katara looks down at him and smiles. “Hey. You alright?” she asks softly as the boy starts to rise up on his elbows, and finally opens his eyes.

“ _Woah_. Uh, hi.”

“How are you feeling?”

“What happened to me?” The boy rubs his bald head and looks around. “What happened to the Fire Nation ship I was on?”

“Oh, we beat them up and stole their stuff,” Sokka says, with little to no grace.

Suki jabs him in the gut with her elbow.

“Oh.” The boy lets out. Sokka couldn’t place the kid’s expression. It looks something between worried and relieved. “What happened to everyone? Are they...”

“We pushed them ashore, I must’ve missed you in the wreckage,” Katara says, holding the boy’s shoulders. “Here, sit up.”

The boy sits up more and looks around. “What about the other prisoner?” he asks, his eyebrows drawn together in concern.

“We haven’t found anyone else,” Suki says from where she stands, leaning against the wooden rail of the ship. She looks out at the water, her eyes narrowed. “I don’t see anyone floating on the top right now, either.”

The boy looks pained. He looks around at the sails, the décor of the ship, and eventually the clothes of his saviors. “Can we... were you guys planning on staying here tonight?” The boy quickly stops himself, tacking on, “I don’t mean... I mean... you guys are pirates, right? What are you gonna do with... me?”

Sokka shrugs, and takes off his sword in its sheath and puts it on the ground a few paces away to try and make him more comfortable. “Relax. We’re not gonna hurt you. What’s your name, kid?”

“...Aang.”

“See, not a Fire Nation name. We’re not a threat to you. Promise.” Sokka pauses. “You’re _not_ Fire Nation, are you?”

“I – what? No.”

“Then you don’t have anything to worry about. We’ll give you a ride to the next port. You just need to work with us until we get there. Everyone earns their keep here, you work to eat and stay on the boat. Hopefully you’ll find a way to contact someone you know when we find another place to dock. Probably won’t be for a few days, at least.”

“No, I don’t have anyone to contact. I’ll just... find my way to somewhere familiar, I guess.” The boy goes quiet. Sokka knows the look on the boy’s face as plain as day: grief. It looks like something he’d still processing and hasn’t fully accepted, and Sokka isn’t going to ask about it unprovoked.

Katara frowns. “Sorry, Aang, but we can’t stay here. It’s dangerous for us to stay here after an attack, I’m sure the helmsman had time to radio for backup before we sunk the ship – well, before _Jet_ sunk the ship,” she corrects bitterly. “They’ll be coming to our coordinates to check on the boat.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“We always sail at night, anyways. Nights are when it’s easiest for us to travel, days are when we port and rest.”

“Why?”

“Katara’s a waterbender,” Sokka explains. “She’s stronger at night, and if we ever hit a storm, she can guide us through it. It’s easier that way.” Unspoken is the fact that Yue’s light would protect them – she has so far, and he always feels at ease under the soft glow of the moon. Not that he’d tell the kid that. He doesn’t know this Aang boy well enough to share that trauma. Maybe another time. Or never. Probably never. Aang’s only going to be on the ship for a few days, anyways.

“You’re a waterbender? Is that how you got me out?” Aang is looking at Katara with stars in his eyes.

His sister smiles. “Yeah, I can heal that burn on you, if you’d like.” She looked around at the crew. “Anyone else get injured?”

“Sokka got hit,” Toph says, pointing in the older boy’s direction.

Sokka gasps. “Traitor!”

“Wait, what?” Katara stands up and walks to her brother to look at the blood-covered burn on his shoulder. She hits him. “Idiot! Why didn’t you mention it?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sokka drawls. “I thought we were busy pulling the near-dead body from the water, figured he took precedent over my little boo-boo.”

Katara rolls her eyes before pulling some water from over the side of the boat and coating her hands, slowly running the water over the burn. He sighs happily. He had been ignoring the pain since it happened, but this feels nice.

“So,” Suki begins, turning to the boy who was still sitting on the floor of the boat. “Who was the other prisoner? We can keep a look out over night, maybe they floated away on some driftwood.” The _or probably sank_ is left unsaid, not wanting to upset the teenager.

Aang frowns. “Yeah, maybe. He was Fire Nation, but he was deemed an undesirable, so he was a prisoner. Apparently he was a traitor, but he didn’t seem very happy about it.”

“Well a traitor to the Fire Nation is a friend to us!” Sokka declares with glee.

“Oh, you guys would love him! We got captured together – well, I mean, he tried to capture me first, then that ship captured us together. We were in that holding cell on the ship for maybe a week? He’s a cool guy, has a scar on his face, kinda temperamental but he was nice enough to me once we got to talking, after maybe four days of silence.”

“So,” Sokka says loudly, cutting off the man’s ramblings. “Who is he?”

“Oh, right!” Aang says cheerfully. “He’s the prince of the Fire Nation.” Everyone goes stiff. “Well, former prince, I guess... I hope he made it.” Aang looked back out at the water.

Sokka frowns as his gaze returns to the smoldering ship that is almost sunk. He couldn’t help but think, **_I hope he didn’t_**.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my first multi-chapter atla fic i've ever written, hope i'm doing the characters justice!  
> i hope you guys are enjoying it so far, please let me know your thoughts and feelings, what you think could be added, etc, i'm always open to suggestions!  
> thanks for reading!  
> -tay


	2. By the Powers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sokka and Suki have a chat. Sokka thinks they’re going to hook up. (They’re not, but he enjoys the company anyway.)  
> Then he finds the weird boy they pulled from the water in his sister’s room and he is not having any of that on his ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> side note: i don't know how bathrooms work on a ship in whatever time period ATLA is set in, so i chose to do what every other tv show/movie/book in existence has done for decades and just pretend no one needs bathrooms, it's a nonissue  
> also all the chapter titles are just lyrics from "hoist the colors" from the pirates of the caribbean movies. (even PotC didn't talk about bathrooms on boats so neither will i, in honor of pirate king elizabeth swann)  
> okay, that's all, thanks, enjoy the chapter!

After Katara told Aang that she’d take him to the men’s quarters, Sokka finally got to go to his own, and as soon as the door closes behind him, he lets out a heavy sigh. It was not a good day. He had Jet’s disobedience to deal with, he almost got blown up (again, Jet), and now he has a _kid_ that he didn’t know if he could trust on his ship – alright, so he wasn’t a kid, but he still couldn’t be trusted. (Yet.)

He goes to the corner of his room, and picks up a bottle of brandy, when there’s a knock on the door. He sighs again. “Come in.”

Suki gives a small smile as she walks in, closing the door behind her. Sokka grins widely at her, uncorks the bottle, and holds it out for her with grandiose. “Care for a drink?”

Suki cocks an eyebrow. “Not really. I thought we had some things to talk about.”

The ship is rocking lightly, they must’ve taken off already. Sokka assumes Toph or Katara must be up on the quarterdeck near the wheel; to make sure they don’t crash, someone always had to be awake on the ship. (Sure, Toph can’t really do much since she is limited to what she can feel on the boat, but she could tell when they were in danger due to storms and approaching ships just by listening, and that’s the biggest part of the job.)

Sokka frowns. “We can be drunk _and_ talk about things.”

Suki sits down on his bed, to which he lays down beside her and takes a swig of brandy straight from the bottle. “So... what do you want to _talk_ about?” he asks with a waggle of his eyebrows as he places his free hand on her thigh.

“Stop that,” she tells him with a sly smirk, but she doesn’t move his hand. He considers that alone a win, since the first time he’d tried to make a move over three years ago, she’d broken one of his fingers. Whether it was done on accident or as a warning, he still didn’t know. (Probably both.)

Then her face turns grim. “You don’t want to talk about what happened tonight? It’s been a while since we directly caused casualties, you know as well as I do that not all of those Fire Nation soldiers survived the blast.”

“ _We_ didn’t cause anything,” Sokka growls. “Jet did. And no, I don’t really want to talk, what’s there to talk about? I thought you came to have we-cheated-death sex.”

She shoves him and laughs. “You know damn well that wasn’t near as close as we’ve gotten to death.”

She’s right, of course, they’d all gotten hurt much worse. They’ve all broken bones, gotten on the wrong end of an enemy’s weapon, or some fiery fists. (Or that one time when Sokka dropped his own sword while cleaning it and it landed in his foot, almost cutting off his pinky toe, which Toph _refuses_ to let it go.)

Just last year, at the ripe old age of twenty, Sokka got stabbed through and through in his abdomen, but Katara was able to save him. It wasn’t something he liked to talk about, not that he could remember most of it, he was only half-lucid during the healing process. He just remembered hearing a lot of crying, Katara’s voice, and Suki holding his hand. He still couldn’t do much for the few weeks following the incident, Katara’s freaky water magic can only do so much, apparently. Katara had almost gone to go get the water from the spirit oasis that her master from the North Pole had given to her five years ago when she had completed her training, but when he sat up and opened his eyes again, she realized it had worked, and she’d just held onto him for so long that he asked if he actually _had_ died. (Katara and Suki did _not_ find it as funny as he and Toph did.)

But that’s why Katara is so vital, she is needed to heal everyone, she’s arguably the most important member of the crew, himself included. The fact that it means his sister has to stay out of the line of fire most of the time to make sure their last line of defense is safe is just a bonus.

“Yeah, alright,” Sokka amends. “So... actual talking?”

Suki rolls her eyes. “We found a guy doing a real dead man’s float in the water, Sokka, I’m not really in the mood.”

Sokka flops back on his bed to stare up at the ceiling. “Okay. But do you wanna have a sleepover tonight? We don’t have to do anything, I just don’t...” _I don’t want to be alone._ This happens from time to time. Every time he faces something where he thinks he’s going to die, he has a nightmare, it's happened pretty regularly ever since he’d been stabbed. Suki helps him calm down when the night terrors come so that he doesn’t wake up the whole ship. He'd hate for Katara to worry about him.

Suki smiles. “Sure thing, Sokka.” She leans back on her elbows and looks at him.

Spirits, she’s beautiful. If he had any sense, he’d have started carving a betrothal necklace the very same day that she had kissed him for the first time. She’s a firecracker, she never ceases to surprise him with new skills, and she’s the most seasoned fighter he’d ever witnessed. She is impressive, and pretty much perfect, by all accounts. And they love each other.

But their arrangement is strange, and they know it – everyone on the ship knows it, too. When Suki had joined the crew shortly after he and Katara set sail on their own, course set for the North Pole in search of a waterbending master, he’d fallen head over heels for her, as seventeen-year-olds tend to do. But they’d agreed that if they’re going to be working together, they shouldn’t get romantically involved. That lasted about a year, maybe less, before one night when they fell into his bed. The next morning, they made a new agreement: that there wasn’t any harm being together intimately, but they shouldn’t date. That phase was ongoing; they didn’t know where it would end, but it wasn’t a subject they wanted to approach. They’d discussed it before. They were happy with their arrangement currently, and didn’t want to ruin it by taking it further. He’d do anything to keep Suki in his life, and he’s reminded of it every time he looks into her eyes.

“Hey.” Suki’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

Sokka shrugs. “Just want to look at you.”

She rolls her eyes but smiles fondly.

Sokka takes another swig from the bottle, before saying, “What else is there to talk about? Does it have to do with weird kid?”

“It’s just – he looks like an Air Nomad, right? He’s wearing their robes, he has traditional airbending tattoos, I’ve never even _seen_ them in person, only in books. Do you think he’s one of them? I didn’t think any of them escaped Sozin’s army, but...”

Sokka turns to lay on his side, and he examines her face. “Do you really think so? I mean, that would explain why the Fire Nation had captured him, they probably wanted to finish him off, make sure the airbenders die out entirely,” Sokka says bitterly. “We could ask him. But what does it matter if he is or isn’t?”

“The Avatar after Roku was supposed to be an Air Nomad,” Suki tells him, her eyes wide, looking close to excitement. “I know the chances are slim, but there’s been so many rumors of the Avatar returning, of an airbender going from town to town the last few years, maybe – ”

“Suki,” Sokka interrupts. “Those rumors are just that. _Rumors_. The Avatar hasn’t resurfaced in over a hundred years. If they’d killed the new Avatar in the air temples, they’d still be reborn into one of the water tribes, and we would know if it was them. When we sailed to the North Pole, the Avatar wasn’t there. That only leaves Katara, and last time I checked, Katara was _not_ the Avatar.”

“So you think that the Avatar is gone? For good?”

“Yeah, I do. When Roku died, he must have taken the legacy of the Avatar with him. There’s no possible way some hundred-year-old Air Nomad is out there, biding their time. The time to save civilization has passed, it’s up to the rest of the world to do it ourselves.”

Suki sits back on the bed and closes her eyes. “I guess you’re right,” she says softly.

Oh, no. He made her sad. _Quick, idiot!_ His brain shouts at him. _Do something!_

“Hey, why don’t we ask him? The worst thing he can say is that he isn't an Air Nomad and he never knew of the Avatar, right?”

Suki rewards him with a slight smile. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Sokka leaps off the bed. He holds out his hand to her with a grin. “Well then, why don’t we go find out?”

She takes it, and they walk down the stairs to the crew quarters rooms. Suki and Toph had their own, then they had a “men’s barracks” but since he didn’t actually _have_ any men on his crew, it was used for their allies that they took from port to port. Katara didn’t necessarily have a room – her room had gradually been turned into the infirmary.

He knocks on the door to the barracks, and Haru opens it. “Yeah, what’s up?” he says, stretching his arms behind his back as he yawns.

“Can you send Aang out? We wanted to talk to him,” Sokka starts.

“He hasn’t been in here,” Haru says dismissively.

“ _What_?” Sokka lets out in a voice comparable to a screech.

“Come on, let’s check the deck,” Suki tells him, urging him not to panic.

When they get to the deck, the only person up there is Toph, who’s bending the sand and dirt around her to make different shapes, both feet planted firmly on the ground even while she sits. “Your heart rate’s going fast,” Toph commented.

Sokka turns and goes to the last room there was to check.

“Nice talking to you, too!” Toph shouts sarcastically after them.

A boat is a very finite space. Besides the hold, the deck, and the upperdeck, there were just four rooms that served as bedrooms, what they used as a bathroom, and a kitchen. There’s not a lot of other places to look, really.

Sokka pounds on the door when he finally arrives at his destination, Suki right behind him. “Katara! Open the door or I’m busting in!”

Katara huffs as she opens it. “What?”

He steps inside the room and looks around. Her bed and two chests that held all her belongings in the corner of the room, on the opposite side of the room is a desk covered in medical supplies with a bucket of fresh water for more serious injuries, and a cot in case someone hurt themselves so badly Katara was worried to leave them alone. On that cot, sat the very person they were looking for.

“Hi!” Aang says happily, as if there was nothing wrong. (There wasn’t, _yet._ )

“Why are you in my sister’s room?” Sokka demands.

“I invited him, Sokka,” Katara hisses. “I needed to check on that burn, it isn’t completely healed and I’m worried about infection, so I went to get a salve for it.”

“Haru said he hasn’t been to their room all night,” Sokka accuses.

“Yeah, and? We were talking, Sokka, what’s your problem?” Katara’s getting angry.

“So,” Suki’s voice cuts through the argument just as Katara opens her mouth to yell at him. They both turn to where Suki has sat on the bed next to Aang. “I like your outfit, it looks like something the Air Nomads used to wear.”

The smile slips off the boy’s face. “Yeah. I am an Air Nomad, there’s not a lot left of my people... I lost my staff in the explosion, so that’s something I’ll never be able to find another of.”

“What?” Katara asks.

So _if_ Katara is telling the truth and they had just talked, then why did this topic not come up? Suspicious. Sokka would be keeping an eye on his sister around the boy. He eyeballs the Air Nomad. They were about the same height, maybe Sokka is an inch or so taller. The guy is wiry, but has a toned body, pretty good shape for a guy who was apparently locked in a prison cell on a boat for a week or so.

“Do you know any airbenders?” Suki asks.

“I am one!” Aang says with a laugh.

“Really?” Katara and Sokka say at the same time, in completely different tones. Katara’s voice one of wonder, Sokka’s much more skeptic.

“Oh, right. None of you have probably ever met an airbender before.” He plants his palms on the cot, and with a swift push, he flies up a good six feet, nearly hitting his head on the ceiling. He falls right back down, but he lands gracefully. He shrugs. “I could blast something across the room, but I don’t want to cause a mess.”

“That’s incredible!” Katara tells him with glee. Aang responds in kind.

“Did some of the Air Nomads escape after the Fire Nation attacked?” Suki says, her eyes wide.

“I – uh – yeah.” The kid didn’t sound very sure of his answer.

So, he isn’t a good liar. Sokka makes a note of that to himself.

“We hid in the mountains near our temples. Airbending has pretty much died out. We all used to be airbenders, but when we were hunted, we started to lose our connection to the spirit world, and less and less of our people were born benders.”

Okay, so the kid isn’t as bad a liar as he originally thought. Sokka also makes a note of _that_.

“I know there’s no way you ever met them, but... the last Avatar was supposed to be an Air Nomad, right? Are there any old airbenders you knew that maybe were the Avatar?” Katara asks curiously as she sits down at her desk.

“No.” The answer is devoid of emotion; sounds rehearsed. Sokka would have to grill him about that later. “I haven’t seen another airbender in years.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Katara quickly says as she leans forward to give him a hug. “I didn’t know, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Aang looks surprised at the hug, but eventually leans into it, and rubs her back softly. “It’s fine. I never really thought I’d be the last airbender, but...”

“Okay, Sokka, you were right. The rumors of the Avatar are just rumors,” Suki says.

“I’m sorry, what? I was _right_? Say that again, please, for the whole cabin,” Sokka declares.

“Don’t push it.”

“Sorry.”

“You should be.”

“Will you guys stop?” Katara interjects. “Can we all just go to bed now?”

“Sure thing!” Sokka replies with faux cheerfulness. “Come on, Aang, let me show you to where the boys sleep!”

Katara holds up a finger, looking like she’s about to interject. Suki, who is out of Sokka’s line of sight, shakes her head in warning and mouths ‘ _he’s in a mood_.’ Katara frowns and puts her finger down. Aang shrugs, and smiles. “Thanks for talking to me, Katara. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Katara returns his grin. “Yeah, you will.”

“Of course, you will,” Sokka scoffs, leading Aang and Suki out of the room. “We’re on a _boat_ , unless he jumps back in the water, you’ll see him tomorrow.”

Katara glares at her brother, and closes her door loudly enough for them to hear it down the hall as they walk down to the barracks.

“Did I do something wrong? Did I upset her somehow?” Aang asks bashfully.

Suki places a comforting hand on his shoulder and says, “You didn’t do anything to upset her. That’s Sokka’s job.”

Sokka turns around and sticks his tongue out at Suki, who scoffs.

Once Aang is safely in the room with the other boys (and _not_ in his sister’s bedroom), Sokka and Suki finally go back to his room.

“You know,” Suki begins as she ties her hair up, going over to the water basin to get ready for bed. “Katara’s almost twenty. And the airbender’s a good guy, from what I can tell. She’s allowed to date if she wants.”

“Uh, no, not if I have anything to say about it,” Sokka shouts to her as he lets his hair down. “I’m supposed to protect her, that’s the job that dad gave me, and the one I gave to myself.” He takes off his boots and starts to change.

“She doesn’t really need your protection though. She’s very capable and strong, she can take care of herself.” Suki tosses her leather jacket near the door.

“It’s _different_. She can protect herself from firebenders, but she doesn’t know what guys like... like _Jet_ are like, and I need to protect her from guys like him. I know those boys, I used to _be_ one of those boys. They're bad news.” Sokka throws back the covers and tosses his shirt to the other side of the room.

“Sokka, she’s an adult. She’s gonna get her heart broken one day. It’s inevitable. It happens to all of us.” She looks him in the eyes, then gestures to the window, where they could see the moon. She didn’t need to say anything else. Yue had been special to both of them. When his mother died, it had been so painful, and Yue didn’t necessarily hurt less or more, but it hurt differently. Like they hit in different places in his heart. Yue’s loss had struck everyone, but a loss like that – the loss of a _lover_ – was something neither Sokka nor Suki had ever experienced before. It was something they hoped to never experience again.

He sighs. “I know that. But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Besides – ” Suki kneels down on the bed and cups his face in her hands tenderly. “You were _never_ one of those boys.”

“I – yeah-huh!" Sokka splutters, looking offended. “I was an absolute animal back in the South Pole!”

“Sokka, I’ve been on this ship with you for four years. I've _been_ to the South Pole, there’s no one your age down there besides your sister. Unless you’re going to try and convince me you were kissing all the young mothers down there when their husbands were at war – and if you said that, you’d be lying.”

“I was a rapscallion, Suki! You don’t know that I didn’t.”

She scoffs. "You're right, you're an absolute scoundrel. How did Gran Gran ever handle you?" She leans forward and kisses him softly before she got under the covers. “Go to bed, stupid.”

Suki blows out the candle on the nightstand, and Sokka smiles at her through the darkness. “Yes, ma’am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had to spend the majority of the first two chapters setting the scene and the environment/dynamic of everyone, so i apologize if this chapter wasn't too interesting.  
> i'll have another chapter up in the next few days (don't hold me to that, i'm terrible at time management)  
> please let me know if you liked it, i'd love to hear feedback and ideas! (i still don't really know what i'm doing with appa, hopefully i'll figure it out)  
> p.s.: zuko's coming next chapter ;)


	3. Keys to the Cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew docks at Kyoshi Island, where the warriors tell them a firebender had been dropped off, half-dead. Wonder who it is?

It had been a couple days since the night of the Fire Navy raid, the same night they’d picked up the kid from the water. Aang is a good guy, a hard worker – well, maybe not a hard worker, but a _smart_ worker. Sokka had told him to man the sails, and Aang had asked which direction they were going, and blew a gust of wind directly into the sail.

Normally from their location it would take them about five days sailing to get to Kyoshi Island, and that’s without stopping at any ports, but with the kid constantly blowing air into the sails, they’d be there in less than four, and that _does_ include a stop at port. Sokka is half-inclined to just let the kid stay forever.

He would probably be more pissed about how much time his sister was spending with the airbender, if he wasn’t so useful. She’s always by his side, which Suki thought was very sweet, she kept saying things like “oh, you know first loves,” which he _did_ , they both did, but he didn’t like that it’s his sister the kid is so taken with.

Sokka could feel it in the air that they were getting close to Kyoshi. With the advanced speed the ship was going, the air and water got colder much faster than they were used to. But getting close to Kyoshi meant getting close to _home_ , and he could feel himself practically vibrating with excitement.

It has been almost a year since Sokka and Katara had seen their father, and a few months ago Katara had come to his room and nearly cried over how homesick she was. She was exhausted from having to take care of everyone – especially his stab wound, which took it out of her mentally and physically with all the healing she had to do to keep him alive through the nights – and she wanted to go home, to somewhere she wasn't always needed to heal someone. After coming as close to death as he’d ever been before (which was a record, really, there were quite a number of times he’d thought he was a goner), he agreed and set a plot to the South Pole as soon as they were able to.

They were dropping the Freedom Fighters off at Kyoshi Island, Suki would get to visit her warriors, and they’d have a few days to rest. Then, in a few weeks, they’d be back home, and everything would be alright.

Writing letters isn’t very practical when you’re on a boat, with no address, so they would send a messenger hawk to their father whenever they could, but the letters were few and far between, which they knew would happen. They didn’t often stay at ports longer than a day or two, and it’s happened quite a number of times that they never hear back from him, probably because the messenger hawk couldn’t track them down again in the middle of the ocean. It was disappointing every time they heard a bird and hoped it had a letter for them, but it rarely did.

Actually, Haru is the one that got the most letters from his father. A good year and a half ago, when they had met the Freedom Fighters for the second time, Haru had just joined, and he told them his story about how his father and all the other earthbenders from his village were captured by firebenders, that there were rumors they were out on a barge where they couldn’t bend.

Jet, as annoying as he is, is nothing if not fearless, and had said they wanted to find the barge. Jet and Sokka worked to come up with a plan – well, Sokka planned, Jet just wanted to blow it up. (In hindsight, Sokka really should have predicted how Jet being on his ship would go just from that encounter.) When they’d finally found it, they managed to attack the ship and get enough coal from the bowels of the ship up to the deck so the earthbenders could free themselves. Since then, Haru’s gotten pretty regularly letters from his father, who says that he and the other earthbenders have successfully reclaimed their villages. The whole crew grew to want to listen to Haru when he read the letters, because Haru’s father gave updates on the war that they likely hadn’t heard yet.

Toph had run away, and her parents hadn’t really tried to get ahold of her again. They had sent some men to kidnap her and bring her home by locking her in a metal box, which is what made her invent metalbending in _one day,_ which is still the coolest thing Sokka has ever heard in his life. They hadn’t sent anyone else after her, and they hadn’t tried to send letters either – whether they didn’t know if Toph was with people who could read and dictate letters, or if they didn’t want to, he couldn’t say.

Suki is an orphan and was raised alongside a group of girls, and most of them joined the Kyoshi Warriors once they were old enough. They were her sisters in all but blood, but she had joined Sokka’s crew because... well, they needed the help and she could see it, but also because she had wanted to make a difference. When Sokka had told her about how they were planning on raiding Fire Nation ships, she had said, “Not without me,” and they left the next day. And although he knows Suki didn’t regret his decision to join them – she had told him as much – she still misses her friends, her warriors. Which is why when he heard a happy shout from beside him on deck, he looks out over the water and smiles.

Kyoshi Island.

They could see the giant statue of Avatar Kyoshi, and they rush to get ready to dock. It has been a while since they had gotten to sleep on a bed _on solid ground_ , and everyone is looking forward to it.

By the time they finish docking, there’s a small crowd of people waiting for them to disembark, most of them the Kyoshi Warriors. Suki climbs down the boat on her own without even waiting for the ladder to be lowered, and rushes towards them. Suki is hugging and catching up with the group of girls. They hadn’t been back to Kyoshi since the last time they’d gone to the South Pole, so Sokka knows the way Suki missed her friends was the same way he misses his father after being apart for so long.

“You aren’t going to believe this,” one of the Kyoshi warriors says, loudly enough that she could be heard from the boat. “We found a firebender, some Earth Kingdom ship had fished him out of the water and brought him here. We don’t know what to do with him, we’ve just been guarding him since the ship dropped him off.”

“Firebender?” Aang asks as he leapt off the ship, landing with a slight burst of air to cushion his landing. “Does he have a scar on his face?”

The Kyoshi warrior looks the airbender up and down, as if she was trying to assess his threat level, before she says, “Yeah, he does. He looks pretty worse for wear, though. We’ve been keeping him alive but I don’t think he’s used to these temperatures, especially if he was in the water overnight like the Earth Kingdom ship believed. We think he has hypothermia, but we can’t be sure.”

Katara looks at Sokka with a raised eyebrow, asking silently if she _should_ go check on the wellbeing of someone from the Fire Nation. The look in her eyes tells him she had already made her decision.

Sokka sighs loudly. “Katara’s a healer, she can check on him if he might die.”

Katara smiles, and Aang says chipperly, “I’ll come with you!” which Sokka frankly doesn’t have the energy to argue about. One of the Kyoshi Warriors says she’d take them to him, and they all start to head up to the inn. Sokka just wants to go to bed; he had taken watch last night and he’s running on steam now. He’s going to crash soon, and it’d be less embarrassing if it was in a room instead of on the dusty trail that were on right now.

Toph nudges his side. “You good?”

He hums. “Yep. So great.” He lets out a long yawn.

Toph smirks. “So _tired_.”

“Shut up,” Sokka huffs. “I take watch all night so you guys can sleep and this is the thanks I get?”

“Do you _want_ thanked?”

“I mean not necessarily, but I would appreciate some understanding,” he says with fake offense.

“Don’t complain just to complain, Snoozles,” Toph tells him.

He groans. “I fall asleep _one time_ while I’m steering the boat and you never let it go.”

“You fell asleep standing up, that’s pretty funny. Until you fell and took the wheel with you and we thought we were about to crash.”

“Okay, not one of my finer moments,” Sokka admits. “But still, Katara gets a nice nickname! And I get _Snoozles_?”

“Sugar Queen was _not_ a compliment, but she heard queen and decided she liked it, so that’s actually her fault,” Toph says with a laugh. “Besides, I give nicknames to show affection.”

“I thought you hit people to show affection.”

“I can show affection in two ways!”

Finally, when they reach the inn, Toph and the Freedom Fighters go inside, Suki follows some of the other warriors, and one of them tells Katara and Aang to follow her to where the prisoner was kept.

Sokka has a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach that he didn’t have before, so he insists on coming too. Even if his instincts were wrong, he’d still get to make fun of some Fire Nation scum, so that’s worth staying up a bit later.

They were led into one of the practicing gyms they used, and in the back room is someone sleeping on a bed, swaddled in what looks to be six or seven blankets. He looks like a round blob with a head sticking out.

“This isn’t a jail cell,” Sokka says.

The Kyoshi Warrior gives him a look. “He’s been like this ever since we got him yesterday. He’s barely moved, we just keep forcing water down his throat and trying to get him to eat. I don’t think he’s even woken up once except for when he was moved off the boat and into this room. He’s not exactly a threat.”

Katara looks on worriedly, and Aang steps forward, his eyebrows knit together. “That’s him, that’s the guy who was prisoner on the boat with me.”

Sokka frowns. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

If Aang is right, and the other prisoner didn’t lie to him, that meant that the guy in front of them is the prince of the Fire Nation. But he doesn’t look very regal, he doesn’t look very scary either... he barely even looks alive.

Katara takes out her water pouch and nods at Aang. “I need to take him out of all those blankets if I’m going to be able to see what’s wrong with him.”

Aang steps forward and starts unwrapping the man – which was weird, considering all they could see when he was bundled up was his face and a mop of black hair. Now, he’s uncovered, wearing Earth Kingdom green, and he looks... _hot_. Well, technically, the man is shivering so he looks cold, but the point remains that he’s an objectively good-looking guy. The scar gives him an element of danger, it only adds to his looks. _No, stop that_ , Sokka scolds himself. _Fire Nation bad. The scar doesn’t make him look dangerous, it shows that he_ is _dangerous._

And yet...

As soon as the blankets are off, the man begins to move around, groaning, searching for a source of heat. Katara huffs as she covers her hands with water. “Hold him down.”

Sokka and Aang hold down either side of him. The man’s eyes are closed, and he looks very sick, his cheeks flushed a deep red and the rest of his face deathly pale. He’s afraid to look at anywhere but the man’s face, in case he wakes up and starts attacking. And also because he keeps getting distracted by the man’s biceps.

_Sokka, you useless bisexual_ , his brain screams at him. _Get it together! That’s the enemy._

He’s fighting to force himself to obey logic, when the rest of his body didn’t want to listen.

_Bad. This man is bad_ , he tells himself. _His family is the reason so many people are dead. Why_ mom _is dead._

_Yes, but consider this_ , another part of him thinks. _He's so pretty. Like,_ really _pretty._

“Okay,” Katara’s voice interrupts, which he thanks the spirits for because he didn’t like where his thoughts were going. “He’s got hypothermia, you guys have done a good job of keeping him warm until he gets to the right body temperature again,” she says to the Kyoshi Warrior that’s with them, before turning back to her patient. “But he’ll need more time to get over it... if he can fight it off at all. He’s got a few cuts and bruises, and it looks like he broke a couple of fingers a few days back. All together, the hypothermia is the worst part of it. I can heal up his fingers in a few sessions, but I’m...”

She trails off, turning away with a strange look on her face.

“What?” Sokka asks, afraid of what’s coming.

“His fingers have already started healing, but they aren’t in the right place. So I think we have to... _re_ break them, so I can heal them properly.” Katara looks sick.

Aang’s face grows pale as he looks at the man on the table. “Zuko’s been through... _a lot_ , from what he told me in that prison cell. I know he’s been through worse, but...”

Katara nods. “You don’t have to be here for it, Aang.”

“No,” he quickly says. “I need to. I don’t know if he even liked me at all down in that cell, or if he was just lonely and I was there, but he’s gonna wake up when someone breaks his fingers, and he needs to have at least one face he recognizes.”

It’s noble, and Sokka is grateful that he wouldn’t have to hold the man – this _Zuko_ – down on his own, he’s afraid the guy would be able to throw him off if he got into enough of a rage. Sokka knows he’s taller and a bit bulkier than the man in front of him, but if someone is breaking _his_ fingers, he’s sure he’d get a weird bout of strength, too.

“Are we going to do it now?” Aang asks.

Katara shakes her head. “I’m not – I can’t... I’m not going to be able to break someone’s fingers like that. I don’t think I can.” Sokka knows what she meant. It was different when someone was coming towards you, flames in hand, and it was fight or die. But this man is unconscious, obviously already in a lot of pain, and it feels _wrong_ , even though he knows it needs to be done.

“Should I go get Suki?” The Kyoshi Warrior asks. Sokka and Katara both nod.

Suki has done this before. She had told them once that before joining the crew, she had been hiking on the island alone, and she’d fallen down a ravine and broken her wrist. When she finally found a way back to her village days later, someone had to reset it since it had started to heal out of place. Suki said it was one of the worst pains she’d ever experienced before, and Sokka knows she wouldn’t take this job lightly. Plus, he’d rather it be her than Toph. Toph would probably suggest using a rock, but they weren’t trying to crush _all_ the bones in his fingers so that should probably be their last resort.

When Suki comes along, she’s alone, and she looks grim. “Let’s do this,” she says somberly. She’s actively avoiding looking at Zuko’s face – maybe it’s easier that way, to just see it as a hand and not a hand that’s attached to a human being that feels pain.

Katara is at the ready, Aang and Sokka lean over his body to hold him down. Suki takes a deep breath. Everyone but Suki looks away, and they hear a sickening crunch. Zuko screams and flails – seems like he woke up.

One of Zuko’s arms breaks free of his grip and he grabs Sokka’s hand, which normally would have been nice, except that his fist is scalding hot and _on fire_.

Sokka breaks free of the man’s grip with a hiss, before grabbing Zuko’s wrist again and shoving it back down by his side so he didn’t burn anyone again. His own hand throbs, but it doesn’t feel blistered. Maybe he should have taken the side with the broken bones, Aang didn’t seem to be getting burnt that much. Aang is saying something to Zuko, but Sokka couldn’t understand what it is through the blood pumping in his ears.

Katara rushes to take Suki’s place, Suki goes outside (probably to throw up), and Katara immediately puts the water over his hand, and he lets out a sigh of relief. When Sokka looks up at the man’s face, his eyes were open, that liquid gold that he always saw in portraits of the royal family. One of his eyes narrows – the good one, the one with the burn seemed to be a permanent state of being narrowed – when he looks at Aang, and he lets out one word: “You?”

Sokka couldn’t place how the man felt when he said that. He seems a little bit angry, a lot a bit shocked, and even... a little comforted, that he isn’t alone.

Aang nods and says, “You’re gonna be okay.”

Zuko seems to not want to hear anything else, because he simply nods back, and closes his eyes. Within the minute, he’s passed out, which Sokka supposed is to be expected for someone who just had some bones broken.

Katara sucks in a steadying breath as she takes her hands away from his broken fingers. “Okay, they’re in the proper spot now. We won’t have to do that again.” It sounds like she’s saying it more to herself than anyone else. “I’ll need to come in here periodically to check on the hypothermia and do another healing session.” Everyone is silent as she wraps the fingers so much that he wouldn’t be able to move them at all. “Come on, let’s get him back under the blankets.”

They swaddle Zuko back into the half dozen blankets. One of the Kyoshi Warriors comes back, and Katara fills her in on his prognosis. The warrior asks for Aang to stay so she could talk to him when Katara and her were done talking. Aang agrees easily, so Sokka decides not to worry about it.

Sokka walks outside, and sees Suki sitting on the wooden stoop with her head between her knees. He sits down beside her, and she looks up at him, attempting to give him a weak smile. He puts an arm around her, and she buries her face in his chest as she sheds some tears.

Sokka looks down at his free hand. His palm is red, like he had just gotten a sunburn, and there were finger marks along the backside of his hand, but it’s not too painful. It didn’t hurt like every other burn he’d gotten.

This burn is light, almost like the firebender hadn’t actually _meant_ to hurt him.

He hears Suki sniffling as he keeps rubbing her back. He closes his eyes, before standing up, taking Suki with him. He leads her back to the inn. It’s been a long day, and he had too much to think about.

The whole walk back, Sokka tries to ignore the weird buzzing feeling he feels in his chest when he thinks of the patch of skin where Zuko had touched him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not very good at slow-burn, but i'm gonna do my best, ok? there's a lot of angst to get through.  
> i always feel so bad writing zuko angst because baby deserves love, but he'll get it eventually i promise.  
> anyways, thanks for reading! i hope you guys enjoyed it, please let me know in the comments!  
> -tay


	4. The Devil to Pay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko wakes up. He meets Sokka and may or may not already have a gay crush. Zhao shows up and is a fucker as per usual, and Aang goes feral.  
> -  
> All the chapters previous have including Sokka’s thoughts but told from the third person, from now on we’ll be occasionally alternating who’s head we’re in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd like to start by saying thank you all for your comments, it really makes me feel inspired! special thanks to user @thegrayrobin for commenting on all of the chapters as they went along, i enjoyed your live tweet of reading my story and it reinvigorated me to pump out this extra long chapter!  
> i'd also like to thank instagram artist @6y9brows_ for posting artwork of sokka but if he was an edgy modern guy, because it was way too hot and i took some inspiration from their art.

Zuko feels himself going in and out of consciousness. How long has it been since the explosion? A few hours? A few months? He couldn’t tell, he’s never awake long enough to find out.

The first time it happens, his vision is too blurry and he couldn’t see anything, all he hears is a voice. It’s a soft, woman’s voice. She sees his eyes flicker and suddenly a glass of water is at his lips, which he appreciates. She holds it for him until it’s empty. He tries to formulate words, but he couldn’t. She begins humming to herself, then another voice comes in, this one deeper voice, one he assumes belongs to a man, and it’s almost musical in a way. He asks her something he couldn’t comprehend, then the woman’s voice says, “It’s only a matter of time before he wakes up permanently. He’s going to live. I’ll make sure of it.”

Who’s 'he’? Is it him? Zuko doesn’t know. He passes out again.

But the next time, he could see. He opens his eyes slightly, and a figure he couldn’t focus on came into view. He could see the blue arrow on his head, and that’s all he needs to discern who it is. Aang smiles at him and tells him he has some food. Zuko tries to sit up properly, but Aang pushes him back down so he could eat, and Zuko doesn’t have the strength to argue.

Things went like this every time he seems to be (partially) lucid again. It’s mostly Aang and the girl with dark hair who always has water. She’s always making sure he wasn’t dehydrated before she uses some of it on his hand. He likes her, she spoke to him. Even though he wasn’t conscious most of the time, hearing a voice talk to him makes him feel like he’s still a person. But sometimes there were other people, voices and names with blurred features that he couldn’t place. There’s at least one man other than Aang who has been in the room with him before, and a group of women it sounded like as well.

He hears a man’s voice, a deep, commanding voice, say, “We can’t put him on the ship, Katara, it’s made of _wood_.”

“We can’t stay here any longer, we need to keep going. But if we leave him, he’s going to die!” A woman’s voice shouts.

Aang’s voice says, “I won’t leave him.”

Silence. The first man’s voice saying, “Is this your way of quitting? To stay with pretty boy?”

“No, I like being with you guys, I don’t want to leave,” Aang’s voice tells him hurriedly. “But I can’t abandon him.” Silence. “Please, Sokka? I owe him my life, whether he saved me for selfish reasons or not, he still saved me. I can’t leave him alone, but I don’t want to leave your crew either.”

A heavy sigh. “Fine. But I’m not babysitting him if or when he wakes up. And you’re taking first watch, if he wakes up and doesn’t know where he is he’s gonna burn down the ship. You’re lucky you’re so useful, air boy.” The end sounds fonder than Zuko had expected.

“So, how do we move him?” The voice got softer until he falls unconscious once more.

It feels like he had slept for a year when he finally opens his eyes one day, and everything falls into focus. He groans and finally manages to sit up, if only a little bit.

“Well, good morning, sunshine.”

His head whips around to see a dark-skinned man sitting on a chair in the corner of the room – wait, what room is this? He didn’t recognize it. He looks around. Wooden walls with a metal floor, the metal going halfway up to cover some of the wood. (Which he thinks is odd.) He’s on a cot, and he struggles to free himself from all the blankets and furs that covered him to prepare for a fight. (What _is_ this, some form of prison?) The door is open, but considering he had no idea where he is, the fact that he’s still alive, and the man is unarmed, he decides to avoid attacking.

The man in question cocks an eyebrow. This is the first time Zuko gets a good look at him, and he feels weird. He feels almost struck by something.

Zuko looks him up and down. This is an inescapably attractive person, period. This isn’t something to be disagreed on, he’s a type of gorgeous that’s somewhere between classic and edgy. He’s tall and muscular. His hair is in a ponytail, the sides shaved, and he wears a white puffy shirt that was a very deep v-neck, probably way too low to be appropriate, and a form of blue tights that hides strong legs. He has about seven piercings in one ear, three in the other, and a large tribal tattoo that wrapped around his left bicep that he could see visibly through the thin material of the shirt. (Zuko’s eyes may have lingered there for a while longer than decent.) He has a piercing in his nose as well, a silver hoop in one of his nostrils. His jawline and cheekbones are sharp, but his eyes are soft, and it’s the _eyes_ that really complete the look. They’re the color of the sea, so deep that Zuko fears he could drown –

Wait, _drowning._ What happened on that Fire Nation vessel?

“Where am I?” Zuko demands, trying to put his fists up in a fighting stance.

The man scoffs and stands up.

“Where are you going?” Zuko snaps.

The man is already by the door and waved his hand dismissively, before saying, “Don’t leave, I’m getting Aang.”

“What? Why?” Zuko’s thoughts quickly go to, of course, trying to make a break for it. But for now, he decides to wait, maybe he could get some more information out of Aang.

The man turns around again to look at him. “Uh, because he’s the one who convinced us to save you?”

Zuko is quiet. The Avatar, the same man he’d hunted for years. The Avatar, who he gave up searching for when his sister came after him and tried to kill him. The Avatar, who he had run into by chance outside Ba Sing Se when Fire Nation soldiers were chasing him. The Avatar, who, on a split second whim, he decided to fight _with_ instead of against. The Avatar, who turned himself in to the soldiers on the promise that the innocent families that were outside the wall would be left alone. The Avatar, who was captured alongside Zuko, when the Fire Nation had realized who he was. The Avatar, whose capture Zuko had long thought was his only way to redemption.

The Avatar, who saved his life.

His first thought went to his uncle. Surely he would have found out what happened by this point. He can only hope the troops hadn’t figured out Uncle Iroh was with him in Ba Sing Se and left him alone.

Suddenly, soft footsteps run into the room. Aang smiles. “You’re awake!” he takes a step forward and leans over to hug him before he stops. “I – sorry, I forgot you don’t like to be touched.”

Had Zuko told him that? He couldn’t remember those days in the prison cell below deck very well. Maybe he had said it to get the boy away from him. It isn’t true, of course, Zuko loves physical contact. But physical contact did not love him. Physical contact often means violence, and he isn’t going to risk being open to an attack by making the mistake of trusting the most powerful person in the world.

“How long was I out?” Zuko asks.

“Depends. What all do you remember?”

“It’s few and far between. The last thing I really remember is the explosion.”

Aang frowns. “Zuko, that was three weeks ago. An Earth Kingdom ship found you and brought you to Kyoshi Island, but we couldn’t stay there longer than two weeks. You’ve been here ever since.”

Zuko groans. Well, that is certainly not optimal. Then, a thought occurs to him. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did that man tell me you convinced them to save me?” Zuko holds one of the blankets close around his shoulders. It does nothing to make him feel better.

“So, you really don’t remember anything during or after the explosion?” When Zuko shrugs, Aang continues, “Well, this ship did it – the ship that we’re on. Well, I guess the _ship_ didn’t do it, one of the guys on the ship did, but he’s not here anymore. But after we heard all the fighting, one of the guards let us out to try and move us – or kill us, now that I think about it, but everything exploded, and you – Zuko, you saved us. It was crazy! You saw the fire coming down the hall and bent it to make this inferno so we didn’t die. Then everyone was thrown into the water, I made a few ice rafts for us, I’m pretty sure you landed on one and that’s how you broke your fingers, but I think I hit my head when I landed because I woke up and I was on this boat.”

“So, they captured you?” Zuko asks. Time to come up with an escape plan.

“What? No, they’re friends.”

In that week they shared a jail cell, the two men had come to the conclusion that they needed to keep the other alive if they were going to have any chance of escaping. The fact that Aang is keeping that bargain even though they weren’t on the boat anymore is weird to Zuko. What is he trying to accomplish by keeping him alive?

“They’re a pirate vessel, but I’m kind of unofficially apart of the crew, I think,” Aang continues. The smile on the teenager’s face makes Zuko confused, before he realizes something.

“You didn’t tell them, did you?”

The smile melts away with a look of sadness. “No. I can’t. I just - I think they trust me, and I trust them.”

“Not enough to tell them you’re the Avatar, though, apparently.”

“I have a nice thing going here, okay? I haven’t been treated like... like a normal person since the monks told me I was the Avatar. I want it to stay like that. At least a little while longer, you know?”

Zuko does know. Aang is a bit of an oversharer. (By that he means, a major oversharer.) Within the first day of being in that cell, he told Zuko about how when he was sixteen and the monks told him he was the Avatar and that he needed to be taken away to start learning the other elements, he was treated differently by everyone else. He wasn’t allowed to play games like everyone else, and when they decided he needed to be separated from someone he loved, he fled. That’s how he ended up frozen in a block of ice until Zuko’s ship hit it and woke him up enough for the Avatar State to take over and get himself and his animal companion out of the iceberg. Their paths had crossed a lot since that moment, and it all led to here.

“They’re going to find out sooner or later,” Zuko says after a moment’s pause. “Someone’s going to recognize you.”

“How do you know?”

“You have _a giant blue arrow tattooed on your forehead_ , Aang,” Zuko enunciates clearly, trying to get his point across. “Almost anyone who’s heard rumors about the Avatar being back knows the description! There’s no one else that fits it.”

They hear running above them on deck. Heavy footsteps, and the man from earlier is standing there. “There’s a Fire Nation ship that’s signaling us. They’re saying it’s peaceful, but I don’t trust it. Wait down here.”

“Sokka, I can help,” Aang says.

The man – _Sokka_ , Zuko now knows – shakes his head. “You stay down here with his royal flaminess over there. If they’re looking for their prince, we can’t have him running up there.”

“I’m – ” Zuko begins before the man turns and runs back upstairs. “I’m not really a prince anymore,” he finishes lamely.

Aang reaches out slowly, and when Zuko didn’t recoil, he pats him on the shoulder.

-

_The White Raven_ slows and the sails lower just enough so that the ship and the Fire Nation vessel were side by side. There’s a guy with stupid muttonchops just a few feet across the water, and Sokka already hates him. But they had Aang, an otherwise inexperienced fighter from what he knows, and a guy who was half-dead only a few days ago, and they were trying to avoid a confrontation.

The guy smirks. “I’m Admiral Zhao. And you are?”

“The Captain,” Sokka says curtly, his hand resting on his sword. “What do you want?”

“Cutting right to the chase, I see. Very well. We lost a few prisoners when one of my fleet’s vessels exploded.” The man is staring him down, but Sokka keeps his face schooled. Jet sank the ship, he refuses to feel guilty about a Fire Nation ship that got blown up by someone that isn’t him. “They are wanted criminals, and could cause harm to you and your crew. So, if you have any information on them... I think you’d want to hand them over to us.” He finishes his intimidation tactic with a dangling threat, his voice cool as he looks Sokka in the eyes.

“Well, that does sound like a tragedy. It’s a good thing we haven’t found any criminals,” Sokka tells him confidently, refusing to back down. “We’d hate to have anyone dangerous in our midst.” That’s technically the truth. Aang isn’t a criminal, as far as he knew, and Zuko – well, okay, Zuko might be, but he’s still on _his_ boat, and therefore under his care.

“I must insist that you let us come aboard and search for stowaways then, _Captain_.” The admiral says his title like he doubts the meaning. Sokka hates him more. “For your crew’s own protection, of course.”

“Of course,” Sokka copies bitterly. “But I’m afraid I must refuse your _kind_ offer, Admiral. We are not under your jurisdiction, or in Fire Nation waters. Much of my crew has had bad experiences with Fire Nation soldiers before. I’d hate to make my crew uncomfortable.”

“Oh? There is more to your crew besides... three girls?”

Alright, now Sokka is getting pissed. This guy has the audacity to question the validity of women on _his_ ship? Katara, Toph and Suki would be able to destroy any number of Fire Nation troops on their own, and whatever the admiral was suggesting or implying, he doesn’t like it one bit.

“I’d suggest you lose the tone with my crew, Admiral.” Sokka’s fists clench and unclench, struggling to hold back his anger. “And my crew is none of your concern.”

“Oh, but it is,” the admiral says, his mouth turning up into a snarl. Firebenders begin to flank him on the side of the ship. “Now, let us search your ship, or we will take it by force.”

“Well, Admiral,” Sokka says nonchalantly. He draws his sword, Suki her fans, out of the corner of his eye he sees Katara and Toph get into their fighting stances. “You can certainly try.”

The admiral attacks first.

-

Aang and Zuko hear splintering wood and the _whoosh_ of firebending from above them. They can feel the heat even from down below. Aang gets up, but Zuko grabs him by the wrist.

“I have to help,” Aang pleads.

“We can’t expose ourselves if they think that fleet is looking for _us_ ,” Zuko says forcefully. “And you know they probably are.”

Aang groans, but sits back down beside Zuko on the cot. They hear more noises – it isn’t until he hears a feminine scream, from a voice he’d know anywhere.

“Katara,” Aang whispers. He stands up once more and turns to Zuko. “I’m going up there.”

“Aang, don’t.”

“Try and stop me,” he threatens before he leaves the room and goes up the stairs.

When he gets onto the deck, he sees someone he had really hoped never to meet. Admiral Zhao. As much as everyone on the ship he was kept prisoner on liked to talk about the Admiral, he had really not been looking forward to their meeting. They had a portrait of him in the galley, he had thought it was really weird. He hopes that the painting is burnt and lost to the ages in the shipwreck.

And he’s facing off with Katara. Zhao seems to have identified her as his biggest threat, being a waterbender on a body of water. She has her arms out, water around her, and she’s glaring. She has a burn on her upper arm that had seared the cloth of her shirt to her skin – and from the way Zhao is smirking, he’s the reason why.

Zhao gets into one of the firebending katas, ready to strike again, and Aang sees red. He runs forward and jumps into the air. With a twist and throwing his hands out, the air catches Zhao and throws him over the side of the ship – but he didn’t hear a splash. Zhao had caught himself on the railing.

As the five remaining firebenders turn their attention to the new opponent, Aang thrusts his hands forward again, kicking up sand from the deck into their faces before shoving them off the same way as Zhao. Hopefully, they would take Zhao with them. But no such luck, Aang knows when he sees Zhao pull himself back into the boat effortlessly.

“You,” Zhao snarls. “I should have known you’d create more trouble than you’re worth by keeping you alive!”

“Maybe you should have finished it yourself, then,” Aang says darkly. He steps in front of Katara, so he’s between everyone else on the boat and Zhao. Sokka had gone to pull Suki up from where she had been hanging on the side of the boat after a firebender had tried to push her off, and Toph takes a step so she stands behind Aang, silent back-up. Aang looks around the deck briefly, and he could see that Toph is limited with what she could use since she didn’t want to tear apart their own ship, which is unfortunate since seeing her bend on Kyoshi Island proved to him that she’s the best earthbender he’d ever seen.

Aang hasn’t felt like this in years, not since he had gone back home and found out about the genocide of his people. This anger, this fear of losing someone – he won’t let anyone else die at the hands of a war he could have prevented. He hates when he triggers the Avatar State, but he could feel the power of all his past lives pulsating against the surface, and he’s hyperaware of them all waiting for the moment he lost control so they could help. He holds himself back.

“It doesn’t matter now.” Zhao smirks and stands with his hands raised into fists in front of him. “You’ll join the rest of your people soon enough.”

That’s it. It’s one simple sentence. But it’s enough.

Zhao throws a flaming fist towards him, and Aang leaps forward and catches it, putting the fire out with his own. With his other, he draws his own fire, hitting Zhao in the chest, but with the armor he wore, the act didn’t do much to deter him. Zhao runs across the ship, dodging Aang’s blows of air and fire as he went, earth joining the fight when Toph began to throw bits of steel and hard stones towards his face. But it’s when water joined the fight too as Katara starts throwing ice daggers – Zhao knows his destination.

The admiral grabs Katara by the back of her neck when she had turned towards the water to summon more. She gasps for air, and he holds flames in his other hand near her face.

Aang puts his fists down, his eyes wide. Sokka and Suki step forward, weapons drawn, waiting for an opening – _any_ opening – to get Katara away from him.

Zhao laughs lowly.

Aang’s eyes narrow. “Let her go.”

“No, I don’t think I will.” Zhao smirks. “I think either you come quietly, or she gets a face full of fire. It’d be a pity, too,” he says, gripping the sides of her throat tighter, “to ruin such a pretty face.”

“Aang,” Katara chokes out, looking at him. Aang sees the red fingertips of the hand that holds her neck, and knows Zhao is burning her. He hears his past lives’ screams get louder, begging to be released, demanding to unleash the full power of the Avatar upon the man. It is at the sight of her skin burning under Zhao’s touch, hearing her voice call out to him, that he lets go.

He could feel the power take over him. The only reason he knows he had gone into the Avatar State is the look of fear of Zhao’s face. Even Katara looks scared. But he couldn’t stop himself, he has no control. All he feels is pure, unadulterated hatred. Anger at this man, a man who mocks his people, a man who captured him and nearly killed Zuko, a man who had touched Katara. All he felt is _ragerageragegetKataragetKataraGETKATARA_ –

“Let. Her. Go.” Thousands of voices leave his mouth at the same time.

Zhao lets go, and Katara falls forward, gasping for air. Sokka grabs her and drags her away. Aang could only see the red burns around her throat. He feels Roku’s anger when he was betrayed and killed by the same man whose dream Zhao had pledged his allegiance to. Kyoshi’s anger when someone threatened her island. Kuruk’s anger when Koh had stolen his wife’s face. It was the voices of all of those who had lost people they loved, taken from them by monsters like Zhao. They all scream at him to end it. And he would. He had to.

Summoning fire, he leaps towards Zhao, and grabs Zhao’s throat in the same way he had grabbed Katara. Zhao screams when the flaming hands grip his neck, but Aang can’t hear him. His past lives flow through him, shouting that Zhao has never shown mercy, he deserves none. _We must give retribution to all of those he killed_. Aang can’t find it in himself to disagree. He lets go with one hand, raising it above his head to deliver the final blow –

“Aang?”

_Katara._

He whirls around, his eyes glowing white, one hand still gripping tightly as Zhao chokes. He sees Zuko by the door with wide eyes. Suki and Toph are by Sokka, where he stands with an arm around Katara’s shoulders, which she shrugs out of to walk closer to him. Her eyes are watery, but she didn’t look afraid of him. Her voice is hoarse when she addresses him. “Aang – p-please don’t. I know you’re angry. But you’re better than him.”

The Avatars scream at him again, some agreeing with her, some telling him to finish Zhao off once and for all. He hears Roku scream _listen_ and Kyoshi shout _justice_.

He looks to Zhao and back to Katara. Katara who he fought for. Katara who saved his life. Katara who he trusts. Katara who he might be falling in love with.

“Please.” Her voice comes out as a whisper.

He looks down at the hand that held Zhao’s neck. The tattoos on his skin fade as they turned from bright white back to blue. He loosens his grip, and lets Zhao fall to the ground. He looks back at Katara, and she rushes forward to support him. He feels dizzy, like his knees are about to give out, but he couldn’t. Zhao is still alive. Still on their boat. And he needs to go.

From behind him, he feels the air move first. He pushes Katara back, and turns to where Zhao had just begun to produce his flames. He grabs Zhao’s fists in his, pushing the fire back to the source, and blows a strong gust of wind that took Zhao out of the boat, and sends him skipping across the water a mile out with the force of it.

He takes a shuddery breath. Zhao could survive that... maybe. Unfortunately, with his luck, Zhao would be back. They watch as the Fire Nation ship pulls their people out of the water and back onto the boat before it flees. 

Katara looks at him with big eyes. “I’m sorry,” he tells her softly. “I don’t know what came over me.” That was a lie, he knows _exactly_ what came over him: rage.

She rushes forward and hugs him close. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. She buries her face into his neck and shakes her head. He looks down at the burn marks on her neck, in the shape of a perfect handprint. Zhao would be lucky if he had died. What he does to him next time will be far worse.

Zuko finally steps onto the deck.

“Oh, look who decided to show up,” Sokka scoffs, sheathing his sword. “You missed all the action, pretty boy.”

Zuko narrows his eyes at the nickname, before turning to Aang with a shrug. “It looked like he had it handled.”

“So, Twinkletoes,” Toph begins. “You don’t know the Avatar, was that what you said?”

“Twinkletoes?” Aang questions.

“Don’t avoid my accusation, Twinkletoes.”

Aang sighs. Well, that didn’t last very long. He was hoping to have at least a few more weeks to figure out a way to tell them on his own... maybe. Or maybe he would’ve put it off forever until he finally had to do something to stop the war, so perhaps it’s better they found out a few weeks into knowing each other.

“I know. I’m sorry,” he begins, addressing the five people on the deck with him. “I wanted to tell you guys earlier, but I just... I liked how you treated me. Like a normal person. I haven’t gotten that in almost three years.”

“A hundred and three years,” Zuko corrects.

“Wait, what?” Suki asks.

“It’s a long story,” Aang says. “But I want you to know I’m sorry for lying to you. And I’ll work to earn your trust back.”

Katara looks up at him, her arms still wrapped around his middle as she says, “You better.” He sees that soft look in her eyes, and knows he’s already forgiven – at least for the most part.

“No, seriously, a hundred and three years? I want _some_ explanation,” Sokka declares, throwing his arms up towards the sky as if it would answer him.

Zuko looks at Aang with a smirk. Aang smiles back and says, “So, I’ve got a story about a boy in an iceberg...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think it should be noted that sokka's ship is named The White Raven after the Haida Inuit myth "sun, moon, and stars" that tells of a white raven who brought light, fresh water and fire to humans. the raven fell in love with the daughter of the gray eagle, who was the guardian of the sun, moon, and stars. when the raven brought fire to the land, the ashes hit his fur, and that's the reason why ravens are black birds now.  
> it's a very beautiful story, and if you're interested in it, you should look it up! i just thought it was really fitting for sokka to name his ship that since the raven fell in love with the daughter of the guardian of the moon, and yue was saved by the moon spirit as a baby.  
> anyways, thanks for reading! i hope you enjoyed it! please leave your questions, comments, and concerns down below!


	5. Some Live, Some Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aang tells the rest of the gaang how he ended up where he is now. Zuko helps. (Until he doesn't.)  
> Toph and Katara volunteer to start teaching Aang the elements, and Zuko gets angsty as usual, fights with everyone, before thinking that maybe it would be a good idea if he should just jump overboard before someone else pushes him over.

It’s weird. For all the time Zuko had followed Aang, all the times he’d tried to capture him, he'd never once thought of this possibility. Of being on a boat with the Avatar, not as enemies, but almost as... friends?

When he’d first found out that the Avatar was back, after freeing him by accident, he’d been feral. He’d hunted him like it was the only thing he could do – because to him, it was. He thought it was the only thing that could restore his honor, give him back his throne.

It took him so long to realize that his father never intended for him to come home. Zuko traversed the world alone with his uncle and a small crew for seven years before anyone heard of the Avatar. It wasn’t until Zuko was eighteen that he realized his father never wanted him to come back. Why else would he send his son on a wild goose chase? It took him five years to even recognize, but he refused to believe it. And Uncle didn’t push him to accept it either.

Then two years later, the Avatar was back, and his passion returned in full force. The first time he met the Avatar, he was surprised. That’s a teenager, he’d thought. Although he supposed he was only a few years older, it felt weird. This was someone younger than him, who was the greatest threat to his people – why couldn’t he do it? He couldn’t bring himself to actively try to hurt the kid. Maybe his father was right, he was weak. Azula would never have hesitate. (“You are not your sister, Prince Zuko,” Uncle had told him. “You’re better.”) Zuko didn’t believe that, but he knew his uncle did, or else he wouldn’t have said it.

In those two years that the Avatar was back, Zuko had come to finallly accept that his father didn’t want him home. He was twenty-one when Azula had been sent to capture him and Uncle and take them back as prisoners that he finally seemed to grasp it. So he’d cut his hair, and he’d cried – he’d always told himself it was foolish and disgraceful to cry so publicly by a river, but it was his last piece of home – and it was gone. Uncle had held him and told him crying was human, and Zuko had a right to be upset. Zuko had a feeling that his uncle had known he wasn’t crying about his hair, but because he’d finally accepted his father didn’t want him to come home. But if he had known, he didn’t comment on it.

When he and Aang were locked in that cell together, they had talked. (Well, Aang talked mostly, but Zuko had listened.) And it was then Zuko thought back. In those nearly two years when Zuko had been actively chasing the Avatar, Zuko couldn’t remember one instance when Aang had traveled with other people. It seemed to always be him, that giant flying bison, and a weird lemur. But never another person.

But here they are, sitting on the deck of a pirate ship, shrouded in darkness with only a few lanterns around them. Other people are sitting around him, and just listening to him, rapt attention, wanting to know his story. The Water Tribe girl ( _Katara,_ Zuko reminds himself. Aang had said it enough times) is sitting on Aang’s left, her hand touching his only slightly, so that their pinkies overlap.

Beside the girl, is her brother, the Captain – _Sokka_. Zuko doesn’t know how to feel about him. He’s obviously incredibly attractive, but he is a strange mix of nice and awful to him. He calls him ‘pretty boy’ which Zuko just knows is a dig at his scar. He’s always been self-conscious about it – not that people hadn’t said things about it before, but it’s that he is, in some ways, a prisoner on this ship, and their captain is always poking fun at him.

Zuko doesn’t care about all the other comments Sokka gives, it was just the nickname that he hates. _Pretty boy_. What a cruel joke.

“ – with, Zuko?”

Zuko looks away from the captain and towards Aang. “Huh?”

Aang gives him a small smile. “I was asking if you’d be willing to tell the story with me, Zuko. There’s some pieces I could use your help on.”

Zuko looks around. Everyone in the circle is looking at him. (Except the blind girl, who looks somewhere off to his left, but he figures it’s probably a joke since she seems more than capable of seeing without really seeing.) “Yeah, okay.”

“I was sixteen when the monks told me I was the Avatar,” Aang begins, playing with the hem of his tunic. “When I was twelve, I became the youngest airbender ever to get their arrows – they were so proud, but maybe they just thought that means I’d be able to learn the other elements quicker as well. I didn’t know that I was the Avatar then, I hadn’t even thought of it. I assumed it was going to be someone at the Eastern or Western Air Temples, since the Avatar before me was a man, I suppose I assumed the next one would be a woman, that’s how it usually went at least. The temples were split between gender so we could fully commit to becoming masters without distractions. Of course, there were gay people and the monks didn’t discourage it, but they thought that this would cut down on distractions, not eliminate them all together.” Zuko could have sworn Aang’s eyes dart to him for half a second, before going back to the deck again.

“What about the nomads who weren’t airbenders?” The girl with the fans asks. (Zuko can’t remember if anyone has said her name yet.)

“All Air Nomads were airbenders,” Zuko interjects. “Bending is mostly due to the spirituality surrounding a culture, and the Air Nation was by the far the most spiritual of the four nations, so there just weren’t any non-benders there.”

Everyone looks at him, confused, but Aang smiles.

“ _What_?” Zuko hisses. “I read up on it.” Zuko isn’t going to tell them he had only done his research to better figure out where the Avatar might be – and that in a block of ice by the South Pole somehow didn’t make his list of potential hiding spots.

“He’s right,” Aang says. “During pregnancy, your spirituality gets even stronger. Meditation sessions get longer, your bending is more powerful, too. It’s said to be because of two benders in the body of one, but I never thought it was special to the Air Nomads. It’s just how our culture worked.” Aang frowns. “I guess that won’t happen anymore though.”

“What do you mean?” Katara asks.

“I lied. When I said there were Air Nomads that escaped Sozin’s armies.” Aang refuses to look at anyone. “I know that some did after the first attacks, but Sozin hunted them down. They all were captured and killed decades ago. I’ve spent the last two years trying to find sign of anyone. All I found was proof that some had escaped, but they’re all gone now. It’s just me.” He takes a shaky breath as he looks around.

Katara squeezes his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’ve had a while to accept it.”

“That doesn’t make it better though.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

There’s silence, only interrupted by the sound of waves and a single bird that flies overhead with a squawk. Sokka says quietly, “How’d you survive then?”

“I ran away. They told me I was the Avatar, and I’d have to start finding other masters to teach me. They said that war was on the horizon, and I needed to be ready when the time came. They were going to separate me from someone – the only person I’d ever seen as a father – and I was so upset, I ran away.”

Zuko freezes at his words. He thought of Uncle Iroh. _I think of you as my own,_ Uncle always told him. He hopes that somehow Uncle knows he’s alive, that he’s safe.

“I took Appa and left. There was a storm, as we were flying, and we fell. I remember the water around us freezing – then I woke up surrounded by ice. I managed to get us out.” He smirks and gestures at Zuko. “This guy hit my iceberg hard enough that it punctured it and I woke up – only to find out I’d been in the ice over a hundred years.”

Zuko scoffs. “You act like I was trying to get you out. I hit your iceberg with a boat when we accidentally went right over it, and you nearly capsized us when the iceberg came up to the surface.”

“What’s an Appa?” The blind earthbender girl asks.

“Oh! Appa’s my flying bison!” Aang tells them cheerfully.

“Flying bison?” Sokka questions. “Right, and this is my flying ship!”

“He _can_ fly!” Aang shouts. “I can’t prove it because – well, he’s not with me right now.” Aang frowns. “When I got captured, Appa and Momo were in a cave earlier that day, I only left to try and find food. I hope they’re okay.”

“I’m pretty sure your ten-ton flying bison who can eat a person whole is fine, Aang.” Zuko says it half-jokingly, but he’s also trying to comfort him. He is sure the bison is okay, he could hardly imagine anything that large and powerful losing a fight. Aang smiles gratefully at him.

“What’s a Momo?!” The earthbender groans again. “What, is it _another_ flying animal?”

Aang coughs. “Funny you should ask that.”

“How many flying animals do you have?!”

Aang crosses his arms indignantly. “It’s just the two.”

“Yeah, any more than two flying animals would be ludicrous, I see why you stopped at two,” Sokka declares over-dramatically.

“He’s an _Air_ Nomad, Sokka,” Katara telld him pointedly. “Why would they not have _flying_ animals?”

“Momo’s a flying lemur,” Aang says nonchalantly. “He’s one of the only things I found left at the Air Temple where I was raised.”

Aang says it as though it was a simple fact, not a heartbreaking tale. Everyone is quiet again. Zuko hadn’t realized that Aang went to the temples. There was time right after Aang had escaped the iceberg and they realized who he was, after Zuko tried to capture him the first time, when there was no sign of him for a few weeks, until they found out he was on Kyoshi Island. Zuko knew Aang had to have found out about the airbender genocide that happened, but he had assumed someone had told him – not that he’d gone back and seen it for himself.

“Is that where you were when I couldn’t find you? Before you showed up on Kyoshi?” Zuko asks.

Aang nods, but the girl with the fans stops everyone from talking as she turns to him. “Wait. _My_ Kyoshi Island?”

“Yeah. Why do you think they were looking at me so weird when I got off the ship?” Aang asks.

“I thought they’d just never seen an airbender before!”

“One of them knew my _name_ , Suki.”

Suki scoffs. “Sorry for thinking maybe someone had said it. Ever since I left, I’ve been back to visit at least once a year, they could’ve told me then! In all the letters, they don’t even mention that they found the Avatar?!” Suki pouts. “I’m having a talk with them next time we stop by Kyoshi.”

“I’m sorry,” Aang says hurriedly. “When I got to Kyoshi, I’d asked everyone to keep it quiet. It got out eventually, but your warriors kept their word when I asked them not to tell anyone – they’ve very loyal.”

Suki’s anger deflates and is replaced with a smug look of pride. “Yes. They are.”

“They agreed to not tell anyone who I was, and they haven’t for two years. One of them pulled me aside after we got there to ask me what was happening, and she agreed that they would cover for me. I didn’t mean to cause any problems.”

Suki sighs. “It’s not your fault. It’s not theirs either, they were just doing what they thought was right. It’s funny though, I suppose the Avatar being on Kyoshi is why the Fire Nation attacked us a few years back. When Oyaji mentioned it last time we went back, I assumed it was just bounty hunters, but I always thought it was weird that they didn’t burn the whole place down. He said that they left when the person they were after did. Guess I never thought to ask who it was.”

Zuko pales, and Aang looks up at the sky.

“What?” She asks. “What happened?”

Zuko and Aang stare at each other. Zuko refuses to look at Suki. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? You – ” her eyes narrow. “ _No_. You? It was _you_?” She stands and walks over to him, pointing a finger in his face. Zuko doesn’t stand. If she decides to hit him, he knows he deserved it and he would let her. Everyone is getting righteously angry in Suki’s honor, which he figures he deserves too.

“That’s fucked up, Sparky,” the earthbender says.

“How could you do that?” Katara shouts.

“Typical Fire Nation,” Sokka spits. “So happy to burn anything, including themselves!” Zuko knows he’s talking about his scar, and he flinches.

“He’s not like that anymore!” Aang is quick to defend. “Zuko’s a good guy now, I swear! He could’ve killed me a hundred times by now, but he didn’t, he’s never tried to.”

“What are you talking about?” Zuko demands, feeling confused at his words. “I tried to capture you for what, eighteen months?”

“You never tried to kill me.”

“Yes I did!” Zuko is very aware he wasn’t helping himself, and with the way Sokka has locked his jaw, he’s a few seconds from throwing Zuko overboard to let him get hypothermia again.

Aang frowns. “No, you didn’t. You saved me from Zhao that first time he captured me. Don’t you remember?”

“I just wanted to capture you myself – ”

“You think I didn’t _know_ that? Zhao was going to kill me and I couldn’t have escaped on my own, I would’ve chosen to go with you because you _weren’t_ going to kill me.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I just do. You stopped trying to find me months ago. When Zhao had us cornered last time, you fought with me to protect the villagers outside the walls of Ba Sing Se. You aren’t a bad person.”

“ _Stop it!_ Stop trying to defend me!” Zuko snaps. “I’ve burnt down villages, hers included!” Zuko points at Suki, who is still standing in front of him, as the flames from the torches surrounding them get higher with his rage. “I’ve threatened people, and I’ve used others as leverage on you. I’ve done bad things to try and capture you, why do you think I’m a good person?!”

After a moment of silence punctuated by Zuko’s heavy breathing as the flames grow with him, Aang looks him in the eyes from where they sat across from each other in the circle, and tells him evenly, “You were never aiming to kill, Zuko. I’ve seen guys that fight to kill – I’ve _fought_ guys that try to kill. It’s not you.”

Zuko goes quiet. The flames shrink back to their original size. Everyone is looking between the two of them, staring as though they were trying to figure out what kind of relationship they have. Enemies? Reluctant allies? Almost friends? It seems to go from one to the other in that order.

“I didn’t do this to myself,” Zuko eventually lets out, in a voice so quiet they could barely pick it up.

“What?” It’s Sokka that asks when no one else answers.

“You said, the Fire Nation was happy to burn even themselves,” Zuko clarifies softly. “I didn’t do this to myself.” He points to his scar.

“I’m sorry,” Sokka says. “I was just angry. It was a low blow. I didn’t mean it.” He’s silent for a beat, before continuing, “I guess I just assumed it was a training accident. It’s none of my business and it’s probably a painful memory. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t what?”

Zuko looks up at Sokka and meets his eyes. “It wasn’t an accident.”

Blue eyes simply blink in response.

Zuko stands. “I’m going to bed.” He looks to where Suki had gone to sit down next to Sokka again, and gestures towards them. “If anyone decides to come punch me or throw me overboard, I’ll be back in the same room I woke up in,” he says bitterly before turning and heading back down to the cabins.

-

Aang watches him leave. The door to the cabin slams shut. Aang frowns. “He’s not a bad person. I know he isn’t.”

“How can you be so sure?” Katara asks. “If he’s the prince of the Fire Nation, being evil is practically in his blood. With all his family has done to the rest of the world – to _you –_ it’s hard to believe he’s turned over a new leaf.”

Aang pulls his knees up to his chest. “I’ve never met the Fire Lord. But I _have_ met the princess – Zuko’s sister. If you met her, you’d know Zuko’s the normal one in that family. When I said I fought people that tried to kill me, she’s one of them. She almost succeeded. A few times actually.” Aang shivers, remembering his fights with Azula. “The look in her eyes when we fought – she would have killed me. She _wanted_ to kill me. It’s the same look Zhao gets, and everyone like him. I’ve fought Zuko so many times since I got out of the ice, and he never – not _once_ – had that look. He can’t be evil, not when he’s had to fight her, too.”

When it’s clear everyone was waiting for an elaboration, Aang continues, “Zuko wouldn’t tell me as much, I had to find out from other people, but he was banished as a teenager. Sometime recently, his father sent Azula to get rid of him. He sent his daughter out to capture or kill her own brother.”

“That’s so messed up,” Toph says, making little shapes in the dirt with her pointer finger. “When you say it like that... with the way he was raised, how the rest of his family is... he could’ve turned out much worse.”

“Yeah.” Aang looks at the door that Zuko had disappeared into. “He could’ve.”

“So what? You think Zuko will try and help you stop the Fire Lord? He’s still his father,” Sokka says. It’s reasonable to think that Zuko still wouldn’t want to betray his family.

Aang shrugs. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. I haven’t even found anyone to help me master the other elements. I can bend the other elements a little bit, but that’s mostly from watching other people. I don’t know how to utilize them very well.”

  
“We saw you firebend when you fought Zhao,” Suki says, her eyebrows drawn together.

“I can make some fire, sure, but firebending is volatile. I shouldn’t have used it. I wasn’t really in control of my actions then, especially once I got into the Avatar State. It’s like having a thousand people in one body, and I’m not the one in control. I – I feel like an observer in my own mind. That’s why it scares me.” He looks at Katara. “And everyone around me. The last Avatar told me I need to fight the Fire Lord – it’s the only way to end the war. But he says I need to do it soon, if I’m going to be able to bring balance to the world again. But I don’t even know where to begin to find masters. I haven’t mastered an element in a hundred and six years.”

Katara smiles gently at him. “Aang, we want this war to end, too. Everyone does. And I know it’s your duty as the Avatar to bring peace, but you don’t have to do it alone. We’ll try to help you in any way we can. Have you tried to learn waterbending? Or earth?”

“I’ve used waterbending a few times, but almost every time was in the Avatar State – it’s not me who had it mastered, it’s the past Avatars. I don’t know how to do it well on my own. I’ve tried to learn earthbending with my old friend King Bumi, but I’m not very good. He says it’s because air is the fundamental opposite of earth, so it’s going to be the hardest for me to master.”

“I can teach you waterbending,” Katara says, holding his hands in hers. Aang tries to hold back the blush that he knows is spreading across his cheeks. “And Toph is one of the greatest earthbenders in the world – she invented a whole new style of bending! If we can teach you, then that’s two elements already.”

“What do you mean ‘one of’?” Toph asks with a scoff.

Aang ignores the joke in favor of asking, “And Zuko?”

Katara makes a face that looks partway between disgusted and saddened. “Maybe he’ll join in eventually. We’ll be able to help you prepare in the meantime. If you need to defeat the Fire Lord soon, we need to get you ready. We should start as soon as possible.”

Aang grins. “Yeah, okay." Maybe mastering the elements wouldn't be so bad, if he gets to spend more time with Katara. “When do we start, Sifu?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i basically just used this chapter because i wanted to establish a more concrete timeline of what's happened to aang since it doesn't follow canon exactly.  
> basically in this, everyone was just born about four years earlier, including aang, and aang has already been out of the iceberg for two years at this point, trying to figure out what's happening and how to fix things.  
> sozin's comet has not happened yet.
> 
> anyways, this was a lot angstier than i intended, but i've had a rough last few days and i guess it came through in my writing. i know this wasn't the most interesting chapter, it was kind of just to explain some things. i hope you guys enjoyed it anyways, though.  
> thank you for reading, please feel free to leave a comment if you have the urge! i'm also here if you guys want to tell me something id inconsistent because i'm sure i fucked up something along the line lol.  
> thanks!


	6. The King and His Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara starts training Aang in waterbending, and Zuko loses it over Sokka's nickname for him. Toph realizes something about Zuko's scar.  
> OR:  
> Zuko gets angry at the cute boy for "making fun of him" then Toph and Zuko have a bonding moment. (Until it's ruined.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, so i feel like i need to clear something up about the timeline super quick. so zhao did go to the north pole and killed the original moon spirit, which is why yue still became its reincarnation. however, since aang wasn't there to merge with the ocean spirit to get them out, the waterbenders were able to drive the fire nation out of the city when the moon's power returned full force after yue's sacrifice.  
> i realized earlier today that i had never mentioned that part, since zhao was still alive and yue wasn't, so i hoped that cleared it up!  
> okay, please enjoy! hope you like it, feel free to comment or give me suggestions, it really makes my day!

“Are you sure you’re ready to do this? It’s a big step.” Aang says as he steps closer to Katara.

“I’m ready, I want to do this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Who else will teach you?” Katara asks with a smirk.

“You’re right. I’d want my first to be no one else.”

Sokka mimes puking in the background as Suki and Toph laugh, Zuko sitting off to the side, watching curiously.

“Are you gonna start waterbending or keep being weird?” Sokka demands, flopping back against the sand to look at the clouds.

Aang and Katara turn from where they stood knee-deep in the water. Katara glares and Aang laughs loudly. “Hey,” he defends. “Katara’s my first teacher, I’m not allowed to be excited?”

Sokka’s eyes narrow as he spares a glance at the airbender. “You know _exactly_ what you were doing.”

The Avatar simply gives a coy smile in return, and Katara begins their first lesson. Zuko looks around at the beach they had docked at. It’s a small island, and it looks deserted, from what he’s seen. They were on their way to the South Pole, apparently, to visit some loved ones, presumably the Water Tribe siblings’ family, and the air is frigid. Zuko couldn’t blame the people who left it when it feels like this. (Well, it’s cold to _him_ , being used to living on the equator in the Fire Nation, but Sokka keeps telling him he just has “delicate sensibilities” and Zuko didn’t know how to take it but he figures it’s probably an insult.)

He isn’t entirely sure why they were trusting him to watch them practice their bending – he’s Fire Nation, this is a tactical advantage that he could use against them. Well, he supposes he isn’t exactly Fire Nation anymore, he is by blood but he’s banished, and he’s never going to be able to go back now... right?

Still, they mostly seem to have forgotten about last night, and he hasn’t been kicked off the ship, so he isn’t going to look a gift ostrich-horse in the mouth. Ever since he got here, he couldn’t shake feeling like he’s constantly on thin ice, like they would kill him or toss him overboard when he slips up. It _is_ a pirate ship, after all – but then, Aang had asked to bring Zuko along in the first place after Kyoshi, and they allowed it. They brought a _firebender_ on their ship simply because Aang felt he had a duty to save him.

Logically, he knows they wouldn’t be so eager to get rid of him when Aang and Katara had gone out of their way to save him.

Though they didn’t want him dead, he’s still watched like a hawk. It became clear to him that when his fever had broken and saw Sokka in the corner of the room, Sokka wasn’t used to being there – he was guarding him to make sure when he finally awoke he didn’t blow anything up in his confusion. Zuko couldn’t be upset at this assumption, he would have come to the same conclusion. He knows that Aang is always supposed to keep a low watch on him while they slept, since Aang might be the lightest sleeper known to mankind. If Zuko so much as got up to get some water, Aang knew about it. A single creak of a floorboard or the rustling of blankets falling to the ground could rouse him.

They watch as the Avatar picks up a few simple moves, before his new master moves on to something more complicated. She has been a master waterbender for years now, but she’s never taught anyone, so it’s new for both of them.

After a bit longer, Sokka groans and sits up. “This is boring. I’m going foraging.” With that, he stands. “Anyone want to come with?”

Toph shakes her head from where she is perched on top of some rocks by the shore. “I’m very busy here,” she says. She’s making a little shelf for a baby turtleduck that keeps walking down the stone path. When Toph stopped, and the turtleduck reached the end of the path, the baby animal would quack, and she’d make it longer. So when Toph says she’s busy, it meant she was busy renovating a small beach for a turtleduckling to call home.

Suki shrugs, but gets up. Sokka looks at Zuko. “Pretty boy, you comin’?”

Zuko scowls at the nickname. The captain just wouldn’t stop mocking him.

“What? It’s not like waterbending is something super fun for a firebender, I imagine,” Sokka scoffs, clearly misunderstanding why Zuko had made the face.

“Fine,” Zuko grumbles as he brushes some sand from his pants. He follows Sokka and Suki from a few paces behind as they walk into the woods by the beach. Zuko is shocked that they had their backs to him. They’d made it clear that they didn’t think Zuko is to be trusted, so why were they letting themselves be exposed like this? He could easily exploit that weakness... he wouldn’t, but he _could_ , and that’s what surprised him.

Suki slows down so she’s walking beside Zuko. “Hey. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. For yelling at you last night.”

“No, you had a right to be upset,” Zuko says evenly.

“I know I did, but it wasn’t justified to imply that you were still a bad person. If Aang vouches for you, you must be okay. He’s a very good judge of character. If he insists that you aren’t the same person that you are now as you were when you attacked my village, then I’m sure he’s right.”

Zuko stops walking for a minute to look at her. He couldn’t fathom that amount of trust, to blindly follow someone’s instincts and know that they would lead you true. Nevertheless, he’s touched that she’s willing to forgive him so easily – well, maybe not forgive, but move past it at least. “Thank you. Seriously, I thought you were going to punch me, so I figure I got off easy.”

Suki smirks and nudges him playfully. “Well, the day’s still young.”

Zuko couldn’t stop the small smile he felt tugging at his lips.

“Come on, pretty boy, pick up the pace,” Sokka says with a heavy sigh, not even looking back as he nags them to move quicker.

Zuko glares at the back of his head. There he goes again with _that fucking nickname_.

Zuko snaps. He’s had enough of this man making fun of him. It’s cruel and unusual punishment to keep pointing out his greatest failure to him. It seems like everyone else is starting to forgive and trust him, at least enough to let him stay on the ship and not mention the scar on his face _. Except for him_.

“Enough!” Zuko shouts. “Stop calling me that! I won’t stand here and be humiliated!”

Everyone freezes. Suki looks between the two of them in confusion. Zuko’s eyes are trained on Sokka. The man in question looks at him with wide cerulean eyes, before he answers with a question. “You think I’m trying to humiliate you?”

“What else could you possibly be trying to do when you say _that_ and I look like _this_?!” Zuko fumes, pointing to the left side of his face.

“It wasn’t an insult,” Sokka promises, his face screwed together in concern.

“What do you mean it’s not an insult?” Zuko’s shaking, he is so upset. “You’re making fun of me! As if I don’t already know how I look!”

Sokka is quiet for a few beats, staring into Zuko’s eyes, so closely that Zuko fears he’s a mind-reader and could see into his soul, before Sokka says softly, “I just thought you were... Nevermind. I’m sorry. I won’t call you that anymore, if you don’t want me to.” He turns around and keeps walking into the forest.

Zuko deflates. Suki looks at Zuko with worry shown clearly on her face, before rushing to catch up with Sokka.

How is Zuko _supposed_ to take it? There’s no other way to view that nickname as anything but an insult. It’s just a cruel reminder of what maybe he could have been, if he hadn’t been disfigured and disgraced by the flames of his father.

-

A few days passed and they were back on the boat. Katara is teaching Aang how to use the currents to push them across the waves faster. He picks it up remarkably quick, likely because he has already used air for the same purpose, and Sokka tells everyone they were only a week from the South Pole.

What they were going to do with Zuko once they got there, Zuko hadn’t a clue. Would he be left there? No, surely not, they could have abandoned him at any port before now, leaving him in their homeland seemed unlikely. But the fact that they were willing to bring Zuko around their family didn’t sit right with him. Is it a test? Why would they do this? They know he’s dangerous, they’ve said as much, so why risk it? He isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to figure it out.

When they all sit down for dinner, he looks at how relaxed everyone was. Zuko did not sign up for “family dinners,” as Suki calls it, but he doesn’t have much of a choice when she drags him up to the deck and sits him down next to her.

They eat the stew in a stiff silence. Aang had finished already, he always made his food first since he wouldn’t eat meat and now he’s just waiting for everyone else to be done. He clears his throat at one point, when the quiet is suffocating. “Should we play a game?”

Sokka scoffs. “What are we, ten?”

Aang shrugs. “No one’s too old to play games. I don’t know much about you guys yet, I’ve only been here a month, so I’d like to know more about you guys, if I’m temporarily on your crew now.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Suki chimes in. “We could go around asking each other a question? And we _have_ to answer it.” When Katara groans, she adds, “Come on, it’ll be fun!”

“Fine, but you’re starting,” Toph finally declares, and it settles the debate.

“Okay!” She looks around as if contemplating who to ask, before she turns to the Avatar. “Aang, it’s a bit political, but I wanted to know what your plan is. When you master all the elements, I mean. What are you going to do about the war?”

Aang looks troubled at the question. “I had a vision a while back, on the winter solstice of last year. I spoke to Avatar Roku. He told me that there’s a comet coming at the end of the summer. I need to defeat Fire Lord Ozai before then, or there will be no stopping him.”

Zuko can’t believe his ears.

“The end of summer? That’s in six months,” Katara gapes.

Zuko is still stuck on the comet part. He knew it was coming, and that the Fire Nation had been planning something special to try and end the war in their favor once and for all when the comet came – but he had been banished before he could learn more. “Sozin’s comet,” he lets out softly.

Aang raises an eyebrow. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“It’s what my great-grandfather had used to start the war. It magnifies a firebender’s abilities, giving them a surge of power like you’ve never seen. It sounds like my father is planning to use the comet to end the war, finish the legacy Sozin started.” He has a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Well that doesn’t sound good,” Toph says. It didn’t sound sarcastic like usual. Everyone seems to grapple with the severity of the situation.

“I tried to find other masters, but I was being chased too often to be able to stay in one place for long.” Everyone turns towards Zuko, who looks sheepish under their gaze. Aang adds, “It wasn’t even by Zuko most of the time, believe it or not. It was his sister and Zhao usually. I hadn’t seen Zuko for the better part of a year before we got captured together.” He pauses. “I’m going to need dropped back off around Ba Sing Se when we’re in the area. I need to get Appa and Momo at some point.”

“Are you sure you have to leave? Why don’t they just join us on the ship?” Katara asks, frowning.

“Appa is a ten-ton flying bison. He wouldn’t fit on a boat like this,” Aang answers her sadly.

Sokka frowns at the idea of a giant animal capsizing his boat. “Yeah, maybe on a different boat.” It’s clear that he didn’t _want_ a different boat. If Zuko thought hard enough, he could remember plenty of Fire Nation vessels that were large enough to house an animal that sheer size.

“Will I – should I come with you?” Katara asks.

Aang’s face lights up, before it falls again. “No, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I don’t want to take you away from your family. I guess we’ll need to just cram all my bending training into my time on the boat.”

Katara looks away, saying quietly, “It’s your turn to ask a question.”

They go around the circle for a bit longer, until finally, Toph says, “Okay, Sparky, this one’s for you.” It takes Zuko a second to realize she’s talking to him. “You keep talking about this scar of yours, but I can’t see it.”

Zuko frowns. “And?”

“And... can I touch it?”

Zuko flinches. “Why would you ever want to do that?”

“I don’t know. People keep talking about it, I want to know, too.” Her voice drops. “I don’t have to if you don’t want to though.”

Zuko is feeling twitchy. In a manner of fairness, yes, he should be okay with it – but he hasn’t had anyone touch his scar except healers. No one has touched it in years. A few people have tried, or reached out towards it, but they never actually made contact with the rough skin around his eye. He didn’t let them.

He looks at the earthbender. He sees how everyone keeps him in their line of sight, like they want to see if he would say yes.

They didn’t expect him to actually let her though.

“...Okay.”

Toph smiles softly before standing and approaching him gingerly. Suki scoots over and allows Toph to sit next to him, on his injured side. She slowly reaches out her hand, giving plenty of time for him to move, but instead he takes her hand by the wrist and leads it to his scarred cheek. Toph inhales. “Wow.” She runs her fingers over the rough skin until she reaches the edges, tracing it. It feels big to her, like it covers so much of that side of his face.

Zuko shivers as her fingers gently touch where the burn extends to his ear. “I know. It’s so... so – ”

“ _Badass_ ,” Toph says with awe. “Man, you can still see out of this eye? That’s amazing.”

Zuko is trying to recover from her first statement. She thinks it’s cool? His greatest shame, the ugliest part of him, and she thinks it’s interesting? He didn’t know what to say to that. So he chooses to address the second part. “I can kind of see out of it. I have partial sight and hearing loss on my left side.”

Toph nods, joking, “We’ve got one functioning eye between us, Sparky, I hope we’re never left alone to guard the ship.”

Zuko couldn’t help it. A laugh escapes him at the absurdity of it all. Toph joins in, and soon everyone else is giggling too.

Toph’s touch returns to where the burn ends at the edge of his nose, and Zuko closes his eyes. Toph frowns as she realizes something. She uses her hand to mark a path, and mimics it. Her eyes widen in shock.

“This is a handprint.”

Zuko’s eyes shoot open again.

The laughing stops immediately. They are all taking a closer look. If looked at closely enough, it’s easy to see how the scar extended through his ear and part of his scalp, the lines getting thinner as they tapered off at the end. This isn’t something they had examined too much though – but now that Toph has pointed it out, it looks like if someone had burnt him with an open-handed hit and held it there.

Zuko stands. Without another word, without looking at anyone, he goes back down to the barracks. He is _not_ going to cry in front of these people, these – well, not enemies, but not allies either. He refuses to show weakness in front of them.

When he sits down on his cot, his hand traces the path that Toph’s had. It had been almost nice to let someone touch it, but it quickly turned sour as he remembered why he didn’t let anyone touch it in the first place when she had spoken.

She had figured him out. He was weak, he had let someone get so close they could press their hand against his him and he couldn’t even – he _didn’t_ even – fight back.

He closes his eyes and feels the tears welling. He tries to forget the feeling, but the smell of his own burning flesh and the unimaginable pain are ingrained in his mind forever. Burnt into his memories, just like it was burnt on his face.

-

When Zuko yelled at him back on the island, Sokka had nearly recoiled in shock. Sokka had thought he was flirting, in all honesty. He thought Zuko was pretending to be mad when he called him pretty boy, he didn’t realize that Zuko actually thought he was insulting him. After Zuko had shouted at him and pointed at his face, it took Sokka a second to register that he was talking about the scar. He thought Sokka was making fun of his scar.

Sokka wouldn’t do that. He has a fair share of scars himself, he’d be a hypocrite to criticize someone else’s, not to mention heartless. (He _may_ have said something that night when it was revealed he had burnt down Suki’s village but he’s choosing to ignore this lapse in judgement, he had already apologized, and he could only hope Zuko knows he hadn’t meant it.)

The scar has become a secondary characteristic of Zuko by this point; it’s apart of him, but not the first thing he sees. Zuko’s eyes were too golden, his face too symmetrical, his body too glorious, his smile – when he was graced with it, once in a blue moon – is too bright.

Because of course Sokka sees the scar. But it isn’t the first thing he sees. It never really had been.

And he smiled when Zuko had let his guard down, had let Toph touch the part of himself he was clearly most ashamed of, that was rooted in self-hatred that Sokka could spot a mile away. Then Toph made a comment.

It’s a handprint.

A _handprint_.

It echoes in his mind, even as Zuko leaves. He wouldn’t follow, he knows Zuko must need his privacy.

It’s clear what had happened, and it made sense why Zuko didn’t trust any of them. The only way someone could have ever gotten that close, the only way Zuko would have _let_ someone get that close, close enough to touch his eye with flames, is if he trusted that person.

Zuko had _trusted_ the person who had scarred him.

He had been maimed beyond repair by someone he had loved, someone he had trusted enough to let near him. But who could possibly have gotten close enough to burn the Prince of the Fire Nation? Had he still been there, or had this happened after his banishment?

Regardless, now Sokka knows why he hated it so much. It isn’t so much that Zuko thought himself to be ugly because of it – it’s because it’s a reminder that he had been betrayed by someone close to him.

Sokka makes a promise to himself to figure out who had done it so they can be punished.

And he’s starting to think that maybe Jet had the right idea when he decided to blow up Fire Nation ships and leave no survivors.

What kind of nation would let this happen to their own?


	7. Turn Yourself to Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew gets to the North Pole. Zuko and Sokka hadn't spoken more than ten words at a time to each other since that night when Toph touched his scar, and Sokka was feeling guilty.  
> Zuko and Aang meet someone very important to Sokka and Katara, then Zuko has a bonding moment with Sokka and Suki - and he thinks it might be enough to heal the rift they'd caused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone! sorry it's been a while, i've been pretty busy with work lately, and thanks so much for your patience! i'm really proud of this one. it's got a lot of hurt/comfort, some angst (aangst?) and hella feelings.  
> the chapter didn't necessarily go into an area i thought it would. i'm toying with the idea of making this zukki (zuko/sokka/suki) but it's just an idea. let me know how you'd feel about it, i know it's not what was on the menu, but i'm very into zukki atm, they're three bisexual icons and i love them.  
> as always, please let me know if you like the chapter (or the ship change idea, if the jury decides they don’t want it, i’ll stick with zukka lol). i'd love to hear from you!  
> \- t

It’s been a week since Zuko’s outburst – well, Sokka supposes he shouldn’t call it that, Zuko was justified to be upset – and they were finally at the South Pole. Zuko has managed to only talk to people when necessary. He tried to hang back a lot, but Aang forced him to participate when he could. Aang is apparently an expert at knowing how far he could push Zuko, walking the line between involving him so he knows they all care about him, and making him be around them so much that he blows up again.

They had just docked, but they have a bit of a walk to get to the village. They couldn’t sail too far in a wooden boat up onto the ice, so it’s best to just walk the rest of the way, it was only half a mile. They were unloading, and they were going much quicker than usual. The sooner they could get somewhere warm, the better.

What Sokka hadn’t realized is that while everyone else had clothes appropriate for one of the coldest places in the world, Aang and Zuko did not.

Aang seems perfectly fine, though.

Toph snaps, “Why aren’t you cold? It’s freezing!” Toph always gets grumpy at the Poles, she has to wear shoes to avoid frostbite and it’s much harder for her to see.

Aang shrugs and successfully ignores her tone, replying with, “Airbenders can regulate their body temperatures. I grew up at the Southern Air Temple, it was the first thing they taught us to do.”

Zuko, however, does not seem to have that power.

He seemed fine before getting on deck, but apparently there’s quite a difference being in an insulated cabin and being directly in the frigid wind. He constantly seems like he’s going to shiver, but his body is physically incapable of it.

Sokka sighs. “You guys go ahead.”

“Thank fuck!” Toph shouts as she hurries across the ice. She needs to get somewhere she can see. (Read: Somewhere warm enough to take her shoes off.) Plus, this snow is just not an acceptable temperature change in her eyes.

As Zuko goes to follow them, Sokka takes off his parka and thrusts it into Zuko’s chest. “Here,” he grumbles. He really likes that jacket. If Zuko burns it, he’s gonna be pissed. He jumps back on the boat and grabs a different coat – not as warm, but he’s used to the temperatures, so it’ll do.

Sokka tosses the last of the bags onto the powdery snow by the dock, and follows suit, landing gracefully.

“Why did you give me this?”

Sokka turns to see Zuko looking hesitant, still holding the coat.

Sokka raises an eyebrow. “You’re cold? I have other jackets. Is this a trick question?”

“But it’s _yours,_ why would you let me have it?” Zuko’s forehead is wrinkled in confusion, as if he’s desperately trying to figure out Sokka’s motives.

“Well, I mean, I want it back at _some_ point, it’s only while we’re here. We’ll need to find you an actual anorak at some point, but right now, we should probably go. It’s warmer in the village, so let’s head out.” Sokka slings a bag over each shoulder and gestures for Zuko to follow.

Zuko frowns, before putting on the coat and grabbing the last bag. He catches up with Sokka. It’s snowing heavily, and he’s worried if he lost sight of him, he’d be stranded in the tundra, which is a firebender’s worst nightmare.

Apparently, Zuko has misjudged the distance that Sokka is at, because he runs straight into his back, with enough force that it knocked him on his backside.

“Dude,” Sokka states simply, sounding tired. “What was that for?”

“I don’t have very good depth perception, okay?” Zuko snarls. He gets up and dusts some snow off him and picks the bag back up. When he looks up, Sokka is smirking. “What?”

“Nothing,” Sokka says as he turns around. “You just look really nice in blue.”

Now what the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?

This man speaks in riddles, and Zuko is determined to get to the bottom of it. He’d find out what Sokka wants from him eventually.

After a couple more minutes of walking (Sokka may have looked back a few times to make sure Zuko hadn’t gotten lost, but he’d deny it if anyone asked), they got to the village. The rest of the crew were already saying hello, Katara introducing Aang to an elderly woman in a purple coat, Suki and Toph going into a hut. Sokka smiles. He motions with a nod for Zuko to follow him. Since Zuko doesn’t really have anywhere else to go, he did.

Zuko is immediately surprised at the warmth he feels when he got into the little home. There’s a fire going in a corner of the room with a pipe that led the smoke out of the hut, and there’s a floor. He had always been taught that the Water Tribe people were more primitive than this. It’s nothing compared to the advancements of the Fire Nation ( _And whose fault is that?_ Zuko asks himself bitterly. _It’s my family’s fault we hunted the people of water and air near extinction and forced them to rebuild all over again_.) – but it’s still more than he expected.

Zuko must have been looking around a bit too much, because a tall, older man who had been hugging Sokka cocks an eyebrow at him. “Surprised by something?”

Zuko turns to look at the man. It was clear from a glance he was related to Sokka and Katara. The slope of his nose and the smile were mirrored images of Katara, but it’s how much he looks like Sokka that he is a bit taken aback by. The sharp jaw and cheekbones, the build, even the eyes, it’s all Sokka. Huh. Well at least he knows where Sokka got his looks from. However, the man didn’t necessarily look old enough to be a father. Perhaps he’d had them young? Or is snow just really good for the skin? He’d have to investigate further.

“Uh, sorry, I don’t mean to stare, I’m not – I’ve never been to a Water Tribe village before,” Zuko eventually lets out when he became painfully aware of the fact that everyone is staring at him, waiting for him to answer the question.

“I can tell,” the man says with a look. He turns to Sokka. “I didn’t know you had taken in someone from the Fire Nation, son. What’s that about?” Zuko tries to gauge his tone. He doesn’t sound upset, or really even curious. Just like he’s willing to listen to Sokka’s reasoning.

“Yeah, about that.” Sokka begins to talk a bit quickly as he launches into his explanation, “So, he and Aang were prisoners on a Fire Navy ship together – Oh, Aang’s outside with Katara, he seems a little obsessed with her but he’s a helpful and respectful guy so I’ll let him slide for now – and we fished Aang out of the water and Katara healed him, but then he mentioned that there was someone else held prisoner with him, then when we got to Kyoshi Island, Zuko was there – oh, that’s Zuko, by the way – and he was basically dead so Katara spent like two or so weeks fixing him up, and by then we had to leave Kyoshi to come here if we were gonna beat the snow storm season – ”

  
Zuko is startled. There’s a snow storm _season_? And this _isn’t it_? He isn’t sure he likes this place at all.

“ – and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go right now, and what was I gonna do, turn around to drop him off in the Earth Kingdom somewhere safe? So we just decided to take him with us, basically.” Sokka takes a deep breath.

The man simply shrugs. “Okay.” He turns back to the pot that’s over the fire and checks on it. “Sea prunes are almost done.”

“What, that’s it?” Sokka asks.

“Don’t mind him,” Suki interrupts before Sokka could continue. “Thanks for understanding, Hakoda. He’s become a reluctant member of the team, and we appreciate you willing to house two more people that you were planning.”

“Right, yeah, that’s what I meant to say.”

Suki rolls her eyes at Sokka. Toph cackles. The man – Hakoda – turns back to Zuko. “Are you going to sit down? You can put your things over there,” he says, gesturing with a ladle.

Zuko sets his bag near where all the other bags were accumulating.

Hakoda continues, “We’ve got a few huts for you all to use, you can split it up however you like. No funny business though.” He gives Sokka a stern look, to which Sokka splutters at while Suki and Toph laugh.

“I would _never_ ,” he bluffs.

Zuko sits down a bit away from the group that rests in front of the fire. He feels like an unwanted observer at a family reunion. He places his palms flat on the floor at his sides, and let his fingers slide along the fur rug. It’s nice. He doesn’t want to think about what animal it belonged to, though.

“So, Zuko’s your name?”

Zuko’s attention snaps to Sokka’s father when he’s addressed. “Uh, yes, sir.”

“Hm.”

Zuko has no clue what _that_ meant. Agni, what is it with these men? Is it all Water Tribe men or just Sokka’s family that’s like this?

He decides to ignore it for now. “How’d you know I was Fire Nation?”

“It seems pretty obvious. Pale, black hair, the _gold_ eyes? No other nation has those eyes, you may as well have Fire Nation tattooed on your head. Not sure how you got around in the Earth Kingdom with no one suspecting.”

“Some people did.” Zuko frowns, remembering Jet. “You tell them you’re a mixed-nation bastard and they tend to leave you alone.”

Sokka pauses. “Well, are you?”

“No, not that I know of. Although that would explain why my father doesn’t like me.”

Toph laughs loudly, and Suki gasps. “Was that a _joke_ , Zuko? Zuko made a joke, everyone gather ‘round!”

Zuko huffs. “Fuck you guys.”

That only makes them laugh harder.

A few minutes later, Hakoda is passing out whatever stew he made. (Sea prunes, did he say? Zuko is skeptical at best.) He passes Zuko a bowl, and says, “You keep looking around. You alright?”

“Huh? Yeah. I’m sorry. I just didn’t – in the Fire Nation, we didn’t know that you guys had... nevermind.”

“It’s alright, Zuko,” Hakoda tells him calmly. “You’re no fool for falling for propaganda, it happens to all of us – citizens of the Fire Nation especially.” He sits back down. “Most of this is a recent development, after the Siege of the North and most of our warriors were able to return home, we got back in contact with our sister tribe, and they let us in on some of the innovations they’d made over the fifty years we hadn’t been able to communicate. It’s nice, to feel like one tribe again.” He turns to Sokka and says, “You know, Master Pakku’s here now.”

Sokka pulls a slight face. “He is? Why?”

“After your last visit, some of the kids here discovered they were waterbenders. Pakku apparently wanted to see your Gran-Gran so he volunteered to relocate to teach the next generation of Southern waterbenders. Bato’s nephew is one, he’s only discovered it recently.”

Sokka perks up. “Wait, really? Kurik’s a bender now?”

“Found out last year.”

“It’s been so long since we’ve been home,” Sokka sighs wistfully. “We didn’t even know. How old is Kurik now?”

“Five, figured out he could bend when he was four. Beat Katara by a bit, too, don’t tell her though.”

Sokka snickers lightly.

“Don’t tell Katara what?”

The door is open, and Katara and Aang are now in the home.

“Nothing, honey.” He goes over to her, sweeping her into a hug and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Welcome home.” He smiles when he looks around at the small group. “I’m so glad to have everyone here.”

Everyone scoots back a bit so Katara and Aang could sit and have dinner as well, which leads to them surrounding Zuko. He didn’t really like this turn of events, but it’s somehow... oddly comforting? He shouldn’t feel relaxed, not at all, but he has Sokka at one side and Aang at the other and he felt... peaceful. And it’s been a long time since he felt that way.

“Dad, this is Aang,” Katara says. “Aang, this is my dad.”

Aang clasps his hands together and bows slightly. “Pleasure to meet you. Thanks for having us in your home, it’s a beautiful village.”

Hakoda grins as he pours two more bowls of stew. “Yes, it’s gotten much nicer in recent years.” Everyone eats in silence for a while, until he says, “Met anyone interesting in your travels?”

“Well, Zuko and Aang,” Toph declares with a laugh, gesturing at them.

Hakoda opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, before closing it again. He hesitates then says, “I’m not sure what that means. They’re pretty interesting guys, but I meant anyone else. I’ve heard rumors from some of our allies in the Earth Kingdom that the Avatar’s been spotted. Of course, you can’t be too careful when regarding these rumors, they’re usually quite baseless but – ” he stops when he noticed the six crew members looking at each other, seeming half-guilty and half-surprised that he didn’t know. “What? What is it?”

Aang shyly raises a hand and says softly, “Avatar here.”

Hakoda looks him up and down. “Oh.” He is quiet for a moment. Everyone waits for him to do something.

“Dad? Are you okay?” Sokka asks.

“No, no, I’m fine. Just surprised. Over the years there’s been many different people claiming to be the Avatar, from every nation, I think the last person that said they were the Avatar was about ten years ago, she was an earthbender and we thought she was moving ice with waterbending, but she was just bending the salt that’s in the ice – ”

“I’m _so_ doing that,” Toph announces.

“ – so I suppose I’m just feeling a bit conflicted. I thought we’d never have another Avatar.”

“Yeah.” Aang scratches the back of his head. “I – uh. Well, I was frozen in some ice for a hundred years, so I guess that’s my fault. I actually woke up around here, Zuko hit me with his ship.”

Hakoda schools his face, he looks at Katara and Sokka as if to say ‘ _We’ll be talking about this later._ ’

Meanwhile, the look on Zuko’s face tells everyone that he had just found out that he isn’t a big fan of sea prunes.

-

Zuko had been set up in a hut alone. Suki and Toph had said they would share, Katara and Sokka were staying with their father in their childhood home, and Aang had a hut of his own as well. He’s surprised. Didn’t they realize he could escape? No one is watching him, and Aang is far enough away that he wouldn’t hear his footsteps in the snow –

Oh. Right. Snow. Zuko wouldn’t last an hour in that cold. That must be why they let him sleep alone, he muses. Because they know he would die if he tried to leave.

He truly hates this weather. It’s like being stuck in the cooler at Boiling Rock. He could regulate his warmth quite well, but only to a point, until he succumbs to the freeze just like everyone else. The snow is not giving him fond memories of that time in his life.

Zuko hears some shuffling and voices outside. He frowns, and looks out of the heavily pelted flap door, and sees Sokka and Suki walking down the tundra. What were they doing? Were they going to talk about him? He has to find out. He grabs the fur-lined parka – _Sokka’s_ parka – and some gloves. He dresses quickly so he doesn’t lose them in the snow.

They don’t go far. They end up in a cave, and Zuko isn’t too far behind. He sees them get into the cave and lay down, staring at the ceiling. He could hear them talking, but couldn’t hear any distinctive words. They were holding hands through thick gloves, and Zuko knows he’s intruding. What was he thinking? Why did he follow them? They’d been nothing but polite to him, especially Suki, and he’s going to bother them during a private moment? He feels ashamed. He takes a step back –

And trips over a chunk of ice. He lets out a yelp of surprise and falls down.

He sits up quickly, and tries to scurry away, but it’s too late. “Zuko?” Sokka asks. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know... out for a... stroll?” Smooth, Zuko, they’ll never figure it out. Firebenders love walking alone in an icy tundra at midnight when their bending is at their absolute lowest, great call!

“Sure,” Suki amends. “Do you want to come in?”

“I thought I was interrupting something, I didn’t mean to,” Zuko tells them hurriedly.

“Not interrupting. It’s not necessarily private, it’s just something we do on nights like this. It’s strongest in the poles.”

Where is she going with this? Zuko feels his heartbeat speed up. What’s stronger on ‘nights like this in the poles’? Did he even want to know? His body decided for him. He really, _really_ did.

He follows them into the cave. They lay back down on the ground, facing the ceiling, using the heavy hoods of their coats as cushions for their heads. Zuko looks up – oh, they weren’t staring at the ceiling. There is a hole in the roof of the cave, and it perfectly lines up with where the moon is situated above them. A full moon.

“She looks really bright tonight,” Sokka says softly.

Suki takes his hand again. “Yeah, she does.” Suki gestures for Zuko to lay down, and he did so on Sokka’s other side once he’s in their space. He still feels like he’s bothering them, but the gentleness in Suki’s eyes makes him feel welcome.

“I’m not really one for the moon. Firebender and all,” Zuko explains. “But... is it always this bright here?”

“Not always. But yeah, most of the time,” Suki says. She hasn’t moved her eyes from the moon since Zuko had laid down. They sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes, when Zuko hears a sniffle. He turns to Sokka who rubs away a few tears furiously.

“I’m sorry. I just – I really miss her.”

Suki leans in closer to him. “Me, too.”

Zuko is confused. Sure, it’s a gorgeous moon out, but why is he crying? This obviously doesn’t just have to do with the moon, or else Sokka wouldn’t be crying... right? He had never seen Sokka cry before. But then again, since he’s been on the ship, he only saw Katara shed a few tears, and that was when Zhao had choked her and Aang went into the Avatar state, so if someone isn’t allowed to cry then, when were they?

“Is there something I don’t know about the moon?” Zuko asks quietly. He doesn’t want to push them, they were both obviously emotional right now, and if he makes both of them cry, he won’t know what to do. He’s always been awkward around people, and he never knows how to act around them – these two especially.

Sokka shakes his head and presses his gloved hands against his eyes. Suki takes the lead at his movement. “How much do you know about the Siege of the North a few years back?”

“I know Zhao led it. He did – something, I’m not sure what, but eventually the waterbenders drove him and his forces out of the city.”

“That’s not the whole story, though.” Zuko looks over as Suki spoke. She is still staring at the moon. “The legend of Tui and La is easy. They’re the moon and ocean spirits. It’s where the waterbenders draw their power, and the world would collapse without one of them, just as we would without the sun. The moon is what gives waterbenders their bending, for the most part. And Zhao found out somehow that Tui and La had come to the mortal world from the spirit realm. They took refuge in the spirit oasis at the North Pole, in the form of koi fish. Zhao found them. He killed the moon spirit when the siege started, and the North Pole was basically his for the taking. The waterbenders lost their ability, and we thought... that was it. It was over. He’d won.”

“Until Yue,” Sokka whispers. Zuko isn’t looking up at the moon like they were. He’s looking at them.

“Yue was the princess of the Northern Water Tribe.” Zuko takes note of the Suki’s use of the word _was_. “She was – she was someone really special to us – both of us. When she was a baby, she was born sick. She was going to die. Her father pleaded with the moon spirit to let her live. And Tui blessed her. Yue lived because of the gift the moon spirit gave her.” Suki chokes on her words slightly. “It was a gift she returned.”

“Yue gave back the life Tui had given her,” Sokka murmurs. “And she became the moon spirit.” He laughs bitterly and turns his head to look at Zuko. “Our first girlfriend turned into the moon.”

Zuko is silent. He doesn’t know what to say. He’s at a complete loss. They had fought a devastating battle in the North, then watched someone they both seemed to care deeply about die to save the rest of them. Zuko doesn’t know what to say, how to help them, even make them feel better a little bit. Wait, hold on, some words are coming up –

“That’s rough, buddy.”

_IDIOT!_

Suki snorts and giggles at the words, and Sokka lets out a soft laugh, that grew louder as the time passed. Zuko eventually feels comfortable enough to join in. When they had calmed down, they all turn back to face the moon.

“Sorry, that was... that was so stupid,” Zuko begins. “I don’t know what I can do to make you feel better about that. Grief is... hard.”

“Yeah. It is,” Suki says.

“You don’t need to do anything,” Sokka tells him, looking Zuko in the eyes. “Just being here is enough. It’s nice to talk about her.”

Sokka’s fingers ghost over Zuko’s. Zuko doesn’t pull away, instead, he reaches out a bit more. They weren’t holding hands, but their palms were just resting on top of each other, through what felt like a pound of mittens, but he could feel Sokka’s body heat. Zuko felt like he shouldn’t be okay with this. He had interrupted a moment of grief for them, mourning a lover passed. And what is Suki? Sokka obviously loves her – but then why had he reached out for him? And even though he knows he should feel weird about this, it felt... _right_.

“It makes it feel like she’s still here.”

Suki turns at Sokka’s words, and curls into his side, her eyes still on the moon.

“She is.”


	8. A Call to All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko is on edge, Hakoda knows too much, and Zuko is scared of him around Sokka. Not necessarily in that order, but they do all happen simultaneously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is a bit shorter than usual, but with the next chapter i have planned, it would be clunky to split it up just to fill up this chapter's word count, hope you don't mind it! it's Zuko's Trauma time! not that he shares it anyways, he could never show vulnerability to people - not on purpose at least.  
> anyways, please let me know what you think in the comments, and i am still taking votes on if you'd like to see this turned into a zukki fic or keep it as zukka. i mean it isn't necessarily a voting system but i want to hear everyone's thoughts to help me decide if it's a good idea for me to do it at least lol.  
> anyways, enjoy the chapter!  
> \- tay

Sokka is worried about Zuko. They’ve been home for a few days, but he seems to constantly be looking over his shoulder. He can’t decide if he should feel bad or insulted that Zuko didn’t seem to trust any of his people.

After his night in the cave with Suki and Zuko, Zuko had withdrawn from them a bit. It felt too intimate, like maybe they had shared too much too soon. But it’s already done. Still, it was blissful. To be in between them like that, just barely touching. It felt like something he never deserved to experience.

He’s glad it happened though, despite the way that Zuko is ignoring them now. Which Sokka couldn’t help but think is a little bit funny, considering that is far from the most scandalous thing he’s ever done in a cave. Still, Sokka gives him his space and only hung out with him when everyone is in a group. But Zuko is avoiding everyone else, too. Including, but not limited to, every single person in the village.

It’s dinner and his dad is discussing how he and Bato had taken it upon themselves to replace some of the sails on his ship, because of _course_ they did, but he couldn’t help looking at Zuko. Zuko had a tendency to sit as far away from people as possible without it being obvious that he’s trying to distance himself from them. It never really seems to work, frankly. Toph dragged him in this time, and he looks grumpy about it.

Hakoda ends up pulling him to the side when everyone went out to the square to spend some time by the fire that seemed to constantly be lit in the middle of the village. He notices how Zuko’s eyes seem to linger nervously on them, before following everyone else out. “So,” he begins. “The prince of the Fire Nation? Really?”

“What about him? He’s not so bad,” Sokka defends. He sighs. “How’d you figure out he’s the prince?”

”The scar. And it’s nothing against him personally, but you and your sister have been avoiding telling me this whole time,” Hakoda scolds softly. “Back when we were all fighting, there were always rumors of the fire prince’s banishment, but we could never figure out what was propaganda or not.”

“What’d you hear?”

Hakoda stays silent for a moment. He thinks back on the rumors they’d heard at sea about the prince’s banishment. What led up to it. He had never wanted to believe it, had never actually believed it, until he saw the kid in person. “I don’t think it’s my place to tell you. If it’s true, that’s something Zuko needs to say on his own.”

Sokka deflates slightly. “Yeah, you’re right. He’s just hard to read.”

Hakoda gives him an amused look. “I was like that with your mother a lot. She was such an enigma to me for so long, that when I finally understood her, it felt like... everything.”

Sokka thinks of Yue. “Do you miss her still?” Sokka already knows the answer.

“Every second of the day. But we all must move on. We owe it to ourselves, and to them, to still be happy. I think Yue would want you to find happiness in another. With Suki.” Hakoda smiles at him wryly. “With some prince.”

Sokka’s eyes widen and he looks at his father. “Why would you say that?” He thought he was so careful. He wasn’t even sure of his feelings for Zuko yet, and his father was able to read him like a book.

Hakoda shrugs. “Call it father’s intuition. If it makes a difference, I think he’s even more clueless than you.”

“That doesn’t really help me,” Sokka says bitterly.

Hakoda laughs. “No, I guess it doesn’t.” He claps his son on the shoulder and looks at him fondly. “Why don’t you go back out to your friends?”

When Sokka gets to the fire, he sits by Suki, further away from Zuko. But Zuko apparently is feeling inspired, because he comes to sit on Sokka’s other side. He looks... worried? Sokka couldn’t place why he looks so concerned.

“You okay?” Zuko asks, looking him over like he was checking for wounds.

“What? Yeah, we were just talking,” he tells Zuko evenly, hoping that Zuko won’t ask what they were talking about. Sokka is _not_ a good liar, and he’s not sure he wants to be put to the test like that.

“I just know how fathers can be,” Zuko says softly.

“What are you implying?” Sokka asks, his eyebrows knitted together. He genuinely wants to know, he can’t figure out what’s got Zuko so worked up.

“I just know how fathers treat their sons, alright?” Zuko snaps. He takes a breath to compose himself as to not draw attention to them, which Sokka allows. He turns back to Sokka and says, “I just felt like I needed to check. Because he’s the chief, which means he can... get away with things. So... you know... if something... _happens._..” Zuko trails off, looking into Sokka’s eyes. Zuko sounds like he was waiting for Sokka to finish the sentence, or at least know what he was talking about, but Sokka still didn’t know what Zuko was so nervous about. He’d just talked to his father; it wasn’t that out of the ordinary.

“Uh, no, I’ll... tell you if something happens?” Sokka finishes questioningly.

Zuko nods, seemingly accepting this answer. And Sokka half-expects him to leave after that, but Zuko stays. And it feels peaceful.

But his mind is racing again. How fathers treat their sons? His father has never treated him poorly, him or Katara. Or anyone in his life, frankly. And what does his position in the tribe have to do with anything? He can’t seem to figure it out for the life of him, but any theories he has are tossed around in his mind.

Sokka knows all of two things about Firelord Ozai; he’s a fascist, and he needs to be taken down. But now it seems he can add another thing to the list.

Firelord Ozai: a fascist, a problem to be dealt with, and apparently, a bad father.

-

Zuko is on edge. They have been in the Southern Water Tribe village for a week now, and he feels braced for impact, just waiting for something – anything – to happen that would show that he wasn’t actually welcome.

Zuko met the other members of the council in the villages, he met some of Hakoda’s friends, some of the newly found waterbending children, and even Sokka’s grandmother – his _grandmother_ , someone he could easily be a threat to! He isn’t, and he would never do anything, but they _don’t know that._

Of course, he’s also angry and testy for a different reason. It’s a very damaging anniversary for him coming up. The day he got his scar and was banished.

So to try and ignore it, he’s been pushing people’s buttons to see how far he could get them before they snap and try to fight him.

They never do.

And it’s freaking him out.

He’s tried to bother Bato, Hakoda’s friend. (Perhaps lover? They were very affectionate. He’d have to look into it. He isn’t sure if this was just the way Water Tribe men were with each other or if there was something else going on.) He’s been following him around for about thirty minutes as he makes a fishing net with some of the other men he recognizes from the council. (Which was another thing! If they were on a council, why were they doing manual labor? Nothing about this place made sense!)

However, Bato seems to have an endless amount of patience, since he didn’t seem to care when Zuko interrupts him, steals his seal jerky and eventually throws a snowball at the back of his head.

“Kid, what are you doing?” He sighs.

“Trying to get a rise out of you!” Zuko shouts.

Bato shrugs and goes back to the net. “I have five nieces and nephews under ten. There’s nothing you can possibly do that will rival that.” Some of the other men around snicker a little bit.

“Why is no one mad at me?” Zuko says, stomping his foot in the snow like a petulant child. “No one’s even tried to fight me! The Earth Kingdom people did, why won’t you?!”

Zuko is starting to draw more attention from people around the village square. Sokka is looking at him from where he had been sitting across the fire.

“Do you want me to fight you?” Bato asks. He sounds indifferent on the matter, and that makes Zuko even angrier.

“No! Maybe? I don’t know! But why are you so okay with me being here, you should hate me! You – you should be trying to hurt me! I don’t get it, what in Agni’s name is wrong with you people?!”

Bato simply looks at him, with what almost seems to be pity. He feels someone grab his arm, and sees Sokka, who starts to lead him away. He tries to wiggle out of his grip, but Sokka holds firm. When they get into Zuko’s hut, Sokka pushes him onto the cot and glares at him.

“What are you doing?” Sokka hisses. “You can’t be picking fights, we don’t _do_ that here.”

Zuko is so frustrated he was on the verge of tears. “No! I’ve been here for days and no one’s trying to hurt me! I don’t understand. You guys should’ve thrown me overboard weeks ago, then you bring me here, and trust me around your people, and for what?! I don’t know what kind of political mind games you’re playing, but it won’t work on me!”

Sokka raises an eyebrow. “Are you done?”

“No!” Zuko yells. Then he goes quiet. He actually _is_ done, but he isn’t going to give Sokka the satisfaction. “Why are you guys being so nice to me?” He eventually whispers.

“I don’t know, Zuko, maybe because you’re here? And not causing trouble? Up until right now, that is,” Sokka says sarcastically, sitting down on the bed beside where Zuko is pouting. Sokka is sitting on his left, and normally he would never let someone be at his weak point, but he still knows Sokka wouldn’t do anything to attack him – despite the fact that he _should_. “Aang vouched for you, you don’t seem too terrible, and you haven’t tried to hurt anyone.”

“I have before,” Zuko corrects quickly.

“You seem really bent on the fact that you’re a bad person. Nothing you’ve done around us supports that. You’re a little bit of a dick, but you aren’t like... _bad_ ,” Sokka informs him.

“Yes, I am! I was dedicated to my nation and my father and it brought destruction everywhere I went, even after he banished me. All I cause to everyone around me is problems.”

“Well are you _still_ dedicated to your father?” Sokka asks as he leans back. He speaks with such nonchalance that it makes Zuko furious. This is serious, why is he acting like he already knows all the answers?

Zuko thinks for a second. “I don’t know. He’s still my father.”

“Do you think he should rule the world?”

Zuko snorts. “No. I’ve been away from home for nine years, but I can’t imagine he’s changed much in that time. Besides, if he wanted me home at all, he would’ve asked me to come back by now. And it took me a long time to realize that he... he just didn’t love me. He doesn’t love anyone. And he needs to go down. But I can’t do it. He’s still my father.” Zuko picks at the duvet under his fingers. He does everything in his power to avoiding looking at Sokka. Why is it so easy to talk to him? He isn’t sure that he likes it. “I haven’t been removed from the line of succession yet. That means I have to do _something_. To restore honor to the Fire Nation. I owe it to my nation to fix things. It’s my duty.”

“Maybe you don’t owe anything to your people.”

“Of course _you_ would say that, you don’t know what it’s like!” Zuko snarls and stands up.

Sokka sits up. “Have you ever considered what you _want_ to do?”

Zuko starts pacing around the hut, sparing a glance at Sokka. “What?”

“It’s all about ‘have to’s with you. Aang has to defeat the Firelord, you have to fix your nation, you have to redeem yourself. But I’ve never heard you say you want something. Ever.” Sokka looks up at him and stretches his legs where he sat on the bed. “So, what do you _want_ , Zuko?”

**You.**

But he can’t say that. Because maybe that is a ‘have to,’ too. He _has to_ have him. But he knows he can’t.

“I don’t know,” he says instead.

Sokka sighs. He stands up and walks towards the door, stopping by Zuko’s side first. “Let me know when you figure it out, Zuko.” Sokka pats him on the cheek, and Zuko can’t tell if it’s a joke or genuine affection. But whether it was real or not, when Sokka’s hand touches the scarred flesh of his cheek, for once in his life, he doesn’t flinch away. “You’re allowed to be selfish sometimes.”

Zuko’s mouth goes dry. He isn’t sure how he could ever possibly articulate just how selfish Sokka makes him want to be. Sokka makes him want to forget his upbringing, all the things his family and tutors had taught him about homosexuality. He supposes he always knew this about himself, but like most of his other emotions, he repressed them.

There’s another thing he knows; his uncle knows his destiny. He has always said that it was Zuko’s duty to restore the legacy of the Fire Nation. He didn’t realize that he meant through peace until they went to Ba Sing Se. And one day his uncle would take back his birthright and ascend the throne when the Avatar finally defeats his father (he doesn’t want to think of the consequences of that), and Azula will have to be dealt with – the thought of that makes him feel actively ill. She is insane, she is a tyrant – but she is also his sister. And he still loves her. Perhaps stupidly.

And when Azula and Ozai are dealt with, he will still be next in line. And he’s going to have to be Firelord at some point. And he will have to put his people first above all else.

But Sokka makes him want to forget his duties to his people, forget everything.

And it’s selfish. He can’t be selfish. Not even a little bit. Not when it comes to him.


	9. The Bell Has Been Raised

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suki approaches Sokka about his feelings for Zuko. Sokka struggles with his feelings for the prince, and what it could mean for the others he's loved; specifically, Suki and Yue.  
> Meanwhile, a new foe for the crew lurks around the corner.

It’s always hard to say goodbye, but it must happen eventually. They had left the South Pole a week ago, and they were going back towards the Earth Kingdom. Leaving family is heartbreaking, every time. Sokka feels like he missed so much in the time they’d been gone. Bato’s nephew is a waterbender, and had been for nearly a year, and they hadn’t even known.

He wishes they could’ve stayed longer, but they had a new mission now. They had to teach the Avatar the other elements before summer is over. A terrifying deadline, with catastrophic results if they can’t do it in time.

No pressure, though.

Then there is Zuko to consider. Sokka has gotten past the suspicion that Zuko was secretly on the Fire Lord’s side, he seems to distrust his father just as much as everyone else on his ship. It isn’t that. It’s the fact that apparently his crush on Zuko is easily enough spotted to warrant his father mentioning it. Suki hasn’t brought it up, but he can tell that she knows. Toph knows everything. He’s been obvious enough for everyone else to notice – obvious to everyone but Zuko, apparently.

He’s an idiot who fancies another idiot. Of course. What else would he expect?

They were all sitting around eating dinner, when Toph decides to poke the bear. “So, Sparky,” she begins. “You’ve been gone from the Fire Nation for a while.”

Zuko pauses. “Yeah...?”

“I’m sure you were a hit with the ladies in Ba Sing Se.”

Zuko frowns. “No.”

“The guys then?”

Zuko blushes crimson and hisses, “ _No_.”

“Why not? You’re a handsome guy... so everyone says. If you were in Ba Sing Se for a while, I bet you found someone. Even for a little bit.”

Toph clearly recognizes that she’s playing with fire. Her words come off more teasingly than her earlier statements, and Zuko seems to relax into it a little after he had tensed up, rolling his eyes as he responds with a firm, “No, Toph.”

“Not even a date?”

“I mean... one.”

“What? You didn’t like them?”

“It’s not that. I was busy, we were refugees, I just wanted to...” He glances at Sokka, but quickly averts his eyes. “I wasn’t ready.” He pauses. “I guess there was maybe someone. Before I left. But she was my sister’s friend. And last I saw her, she was helping Azula hunt down the Avatar, so. I doubt that’s a possibility.”

Aang laughs. “Which one was it? I remember them, I saw them a few weeks before I got kidnapped. Is it chi blocker girl or knife girl?”

“Knife girl. Her name is Mai,” Zuko says with a fondness none of them expected to hear.

“Cool,” Aang tells him with a small smile, before going back to his food.

“A girl who throws knives at you is cool?” Katara asks with a cocked eyebrow.

“Well, Azula’s friends aren’t like... _evil_. I don’t think. They’re enemies but... I don’t know. Throwing knives is dangerous, but she never actually hit skin. She normally just pinned people to trees by their clothes. It was kind of cool to watch. And she never aimed for Appa or Momo. So. You know. They’re Fire Nation, but at least animal cruelty isn’t added to the list. Plus, the other girl is a chi blocker, so it takes your bending for a bit, but it doesn’t actually kill you.” Aang says it like he’s spent a lot of time thinking about the Fire Nation girls – on second thought, Sokka realizes that he probably has, since they chased him for a year. “Azula tried to kill me, her friends didn’t. I’m not sure what it says about them, but it means they aren’t _as_ bad as her.”

“He’s right,” Zuko adds. “My sister is intimidating; you can’t exactly stop being allies with her, unless you’ve got a death wish. They’re following her, and they’ll fight against us, but they aren’t aiming to kill.” He takes a bite of his food. “Azula’s the one we have to really watch out for.”

“Still, we should hope we don’t run into them,” Aang includes.

Zuko rolls his eyes. “My sister surely knows you got captured by Zhao and escaped. She knows you’d be heading back to the Earth Kingdom. She’ll find us, it’s only a matter of time.”

Aang’s face falls. “Yeah... probably. We’ll have to be careful.”

As everyone around him nods in agreement, Aang remembers a vivid moment from his last meeting with Azula. A terrifying moment that featured a bright blue bolt of lightning just barely missing him.

-

A few days later, Sokka and Suki lay on top of his bed on the ship. They’re staring at the ceiling and passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth. Sokka coughs when he takes too big of a drink, and sits up, putting the bottle to the side. Suki turns to face him. “Are you ready to talk about whatever’s bothering you?”

He shakes his head. “No. I’m really not.”

“Do you want _me_ to talk?”

Sokka considers. He likes listening to Suki talk, so he nods.

“Fine. I’m going to talk about Zuko.”

He’s been tricked!

Sokka groans when he realizes her ploy. “Dammit, Suki. Come on, can’t we just fuck and not talk about other people?”

“We can do two things.”

Sokka sighs dramatically and flops face-first on the bed. “ _Fine_.”

“Good boy,” Suki says with a smile. “You guys talked after that night in the cave, but now you guys are kind of avoiding each other again. What’d you talk about?”

“I dunno, Zuko was so... angry at everyone in the village. I guess he thinks we should all be trying to kill him or something, some form of vindication for his father’s sins. It’s weird. And I tried to tell him that no one wants to punish him, and he got mad at _me_ for it.” He turns his head towards Suki, who is looking concerned. “I don’t think anyone’s ever asked him what he wanted to do. He’s done everything out of obligation. When I asked him what he actually _wanted_ to do in his life, he couldn’t answer me. It’s... what kind of life does a Fire Nation prince have? I thought the whole point of being royalty was that no one can tell you what to do, but it sounds like no one’s ever told him what _not_ to do. Not to mention the – ” he stops himself from finishing the sentence. _The scar_. Suki knows what he was going to say, and she chooses to ignore it.

Suki shrugs. “He has a duty to his nation. He’s the firstborn, right? He was groomed to take the throne probably since the day he was born. I doubt that’s a habit he can shake easily.”

“But he’s so... _irritating_!” He groans out, grabbing a different bottle of alcohol. “I can never figure out how he’s feeling, what he wants from me – us – whatever.” He grumbles the last few words.

Suki smirks at him. “I think he wants separate things from you than he wants from us.”

“What, by Spirits’ name, does that mean?”

“He _likes_ you, dum dum. In a way that’s different from the rest of us. He doesn’t seem to like most of us all too much anyways.”

“He likes you,” Sokka points out.

“Not like he likes you,” she snarks back. “And you feel the same way.”

Sokka glares at her. “Mind reading is illegal.”

“It’s actually not.”

“Still.”

“Still _nothing_ ,” Suki says. “You like him. He likes you. We know he’s not going to betray us, so what’s the issue here?”

“Because,” Sokka sighs dejectedly. “I gave him the opportunity to give even an inkling of a hint that he likes me back. In the tent. And he didn’t. He could barely even look at me. So even if you’re right, and he _does_ have a thing for me, he isn’t ready to admit it. I can’t... I’ve got a ship to run, I don’t have the time or energy to play a game of cat and mouse. We’re adults, Suki, I can’t chase after some guy who might be straight when we’ve got a mission to do.”

“You used to chase me around,” she teases. Her voice went lower. “We chased Yue around.”

Sokka smiles softly at the memory. “That was different. We were teenagers. We were carefree, back then. We were just some kids in the North Pole, falling in love with a princess. It’s different now. Now we’re sailing the Avatar around so my sister can teach him waterbending, and we’ve got a deadline of when we have to end the war.”

Suki is silent for a moment. “But you still like him, right?”

“Yeah.” He cradles the bottle close to his chest. He looks at her. “What about you though?”

“What about me?”

“I dunno, we’ve got this... thing going on. Kind of. I don’t want to leave you.”

“Sokka.” Suki rolls her eyes and looks at him fondly. “You aren’t abandoning me for liking someone else. You know what this is. We tried to date after Yue, but without her in between us it just...”

“I know,” he whispers. “But she told me to take care of you.”

“Funny. She told me to take care of you.”

They look at each other when the words sink in. They can’t help but laugh. Of course, Yue had made them both promise to look out for the other. And she didn’t tell either of them. That was Yue, alright.

“You know we don’t work alone. We’ve tried it, but... Sokka, you’re my best friend in the world. And I love being around you and being _with_ you. But without Yue, it just doesn’t work. We’ll always just remember that she’s gone. We aren’t what we were when she was with us. It’s different. And I’m not saying that it’s bad, but it’s... not right for us. Romantically.”

Sokka holds her hand and looks at the ceiling of his quarters. “I know. I know that you’re right. But I haven’t... _dated_ since you and Yue. I’ve been with other people, but it’s never been serious, never been anything real. If Zuko and I, somehow, did manage to get together, that means I wouldn’t be able to be with you. And that feels... _final._ ”

Suki smiles at him. “But isn’t that exciting? Sokka, we’ve been in this limbo since Yue passed. We’ve been like this for almost three years. I think it’s time. We deserve to find other people. We don’t need to stay single together out of some duty to Yue.”

“It wouldn’t feel like we’re betraying her, right?” He closes his eyes. He’s thought long and hard about this, but it always made him feel guilty in the end, thinking about leaving Suki, finding someone else. “I always feel like maybe we’d be forgetting her. And I know she would want us to be happy, with other people even, but it still feels...” _Hard_. _Wrong_. It hurts. To think that they could do something to end up besmirching her memory.

“We could never forget her. And anyone who’s worth it would never expect you to,” she says with conviction. Suki is so sure of herself, that he is inclined to believe her. “Zuko already knows about Yue. He empathized. He doesn’t seem like the type to turn around and want you to forget her.”

“No. He doesn’t.” He grins. It’s true. Zuko is one of the few people they’ve told about Yue; the only person they’ve let join them during one of their full moon nights. They hadn’t expected him to join, but he was a welcome addition to their grief; he was a good listener, and it made Sokka feel... _safer_. To know he had Suki on his right, and Zuko to his left.

He likes Zuko. He has since the first time he’d set eyes on him on Kyoshi Island. And maybe, once the war is over, they’ll have time to pursue this. But a thought occurs to him. There might not be a next time. What if something happens? If this is it? He resolves that he’s going to need to talk to Zuko. Soon.

He can’t be a coward. Not when the plausible end of the world is so near.

He has a sinking feeling that it’s even closer than he thinks.

-

A messenger hawk glides through the night, before cawing. A dark-haired girl in red and black whistles, and it lands on her outstretched arm. She takes the scroll from its back, and glances at the seal briefly. She turns to her friend, who is doing backbends around their makeshift campsite. “It’s for her.”

Ty Lee grins, and grabs the letter. “I’ll bring it to her!” She rushes towards the red tent and opens the flaps softly. She bows low, before addressing her hesitantly. “Azula?”

“Yes?” Azula asks. She is sitting with her back to Ty Lee in front of a small table, candles in front of her. She is meditating; unlike everything else in her life, she did not excel at keeping her calm. She’s still much better at it than her brother had been though.

“A letter came from Admiral Zhao for you,” Ty Lee says, not moving towards her out of respect. It is the princess’s position to call her closer or approach her first, and although Azula is a friend, she isn’t about to disrespect the natural order of things.

The candles around Azula flare brightly, before returning to their original height. She stands up fluidly and goes to take the letter. Ty Lee bows and waits to be dismissed. Azula instead breaks the seal of the scroll, and gestures for Ty Lee to sit down. She scans it quickly, and a smirk grows on her face.

“So,” she begins. “Seems my brother escaped Zhao. Figures, the Admiral is almost as useless as he is. Last Zhao and his men saw him, he was on a ship with some Water Tribe savages and the Avatar.” She looks to Ty Lee, who is smiling at her, appearing to be waiting to find out what Azula’s next move is. “Since my brother is a full-blown traitor now, it appears we will have no choice but to use lethal force. What a shame.” She doesn’t sound like it’s a shame at all.

Ty Lee’s smile flickers at her words. But when Azula’s eyes soften slightly at her, her smile returns to normal. Ty Lee may play the fool, but it’s an act. Mai knows it. She thinks that Azula knows it, but she can never be sure with the princess.

“The last letter we received said they found them outside Ba Sing Se, correct?” Ty Lee nods, even though she knows it’s a rhetorical question. Azula doesn’t need confirmation on anything. “If the Avatar was near there, what of those little pests he brings with him? And surely Uncle is there. Zuko could never be far from him for too long, their co-dependency will be his downfall.” Azula rolls her eyes, and Ty Lee feels her smile falling again. She doesn’t like where this is going. “They must be nearby.” Azula laughs. “It would almost be all too easy to set up a trap.”

Azula’s eyes meet Ty Lee’s again, and she schools her expression. “Get Mai. We’ll leave at dawn. I believe it’s time for a little family reunion.”


End file.
